Who will roll the stone away?

Who will roll the stone away for us? Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and Salome approach the tomb of Jesus to perform the burial rites that they were unable to perform over the Sabbath. They were there at his crucifixion, they saw it all (the horror and the pain) and they want to ensure that his ending is observed appropriately. So they come, carrying spices, that they might anoint the body for burial: a lost of act of care and devotion to a beloved leader.

But there is a problem! The tomb has been sealed. An obstacle is in their way. So as they come, they ask themselves: “Who will roll the stone away for us? How shall we overcome this obstacle?”

In the readings set down for the Easter Vigil, the service held anytime between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Day, we hear a rehearsal of key moments in the Judaeo-Christian story of salvation history: the creative saving/liberating presence of God with the people of God over the whole history of creation. The rehearsal is long. We hear about creation, of the great flood and Noah. We hear of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac; of Miriam and Moses. We hear the prophesies of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zephaniah; and the wisdom of Proverbs. Not all the episodes of the saga of the Hebrew people are mentioned, so many more could be recalled: Esther and Daniel, Deborah and Jonah, and so on…

Yet even so, each of the episodes rehearsed in the Easter Vigil is significant. They represent snippets of the story of the way in which human beings confronted with the powerful, awe-ful, wonderful predicament of being human have often asked the question “Yet how shall we overcome this obstacle, this experience of being human, these experiences of being created, tested, displaced, exiled, searching, questioning, dying, drying out, burning out, losing hope? Who will roll the stone away for us?”

In each episode of the story the people are assured that, though it is not in their power to overcome such obstacles, God is with them, God is guiding them, God is even challenging them in the midst of those experiences. And despite their tendency to question, to feel isolated and disappointed, angry and frustrated, alienated, displaced and exiled, despite their inability to understand the ways of God, to want to be like God, to always look for more than they have, to go against the ways of God, God has been there, and just when they thought that they could go on no longer God’s creative saving/liberating presence shows them and takes them on the next step of their journey: into the wonderful world of creation; out of the place of slavery that is Egypt; away from testing and out of exile; out of ignorance and into understanding; out of despair and into hope. And you’d think from all that the people would have learnt wouldn’t you? You’d think from all that, we, human beings, creatures of God, would have learnt, wouldn’t you?

You’d think that just one of those episodes would have been just enough for God’s creatures, us, to stop the questioning and the searching and the agonising and the complaining and the despair and running away and the trying to be like God and going against the ways of God… but none of them did. The people of God persisted in asking the question, “How shall we overcome this obstacle: the obstacle of being human and all that it brings with it? Who will roll the stone away for us?”

Who will roll the stone away for us? The irony is that according to the end of the Gospel of Mark, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus might have been just another one of those episodes in salvation history where the people of God were reminded once more that it is God who journeys with us, that it is God who understands and God who liberates and saves, God who rolls the stone away. For this resurrection story in Mark ends not with great celebration, not with a bang but a whimper. We are told that the women were afraid. They fled the tomb and their strange experience at that place in terror and amazement, and, according to the text, said nothing to anyone. It could have been just another episode in the grand narrative of people asking questions of God, seeking answers, receiving God’s assurance and forgetting it all again before the next trial befalls them.

But, we know that the story does not end there. We actually know that the women must have told someone. We know that it does not end there, or we would not be here. We would not be gathering to hear this story of the culmination of salvation and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The story did not end in fear or we would not be celebrating that we no longer have to ask the question “How shall we overcome this obstacle?”

In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God demonstrates that being human is not an obstacle to relationship with God; that none of the vagaries or foibles or pitfalls of being human can separate us from the love of God. God enables the relationship to continue beyond our wanderings and our yearnings, our questioning and our defiance, our ill-advised ventures and our sin. And God achieves all this by becoming one of us in Christ, experiencing the heights and the depths of human experience all the way to an ignominious death on the cross, and beyond that death to a resurrection that proclaims the overcoming of all that we might have expected to separate us from the love of God. How shall we overcome this obstacle? There is no obstacle to be overcome. Dare we believe it? It’s easy to maintain the patterns that we know and fail to hear the new good news: that God is with us, that God loves us, that forgives us, and the God travels beside us every step of the way.

Who will roll the stone away for us? The stone is no longer there. It has been removed because of Christ. And we have been enfolded into Christ in our Baptism, plunged into the life, death and resurrection of Christ and all that that entails. It is awe-inspiring, it is amazing, it is even somewhat frightening, that you and I together now bear the marks of the risen Christ, as the body of Christ. Yet, this is the truth we celebrate here today. This is story to which we give witness. This is the covenant promise which governs our lives as the people of God who follow the way of Christ.

Who will roll the stone away for us? The stone is no longer in place. It is long gone, Jesus Christ is risen, and we celebrate our resurrection to new life in God with that risen Christ, alleluia, amen!