Who will roll away the stone?

As I was reading the scripture, I was wondering how big the rock, or the stone, was in front of Jesus’ tomb. I get the impression it must have been substantial, because Mark writes that the three women going to the tomb to anoint the body were wondering who would roll the rock away. So it’s going to be a pretty large rock if three women think it’s too big for them to roll away.

So I decided, for fun, to google the largest rock in the world. I got a list of monoliths — from the Greek words mono, meaning one, and lithos, meaning stone. It’s not a very precise geological term, but for the purpose of us lay people here, it was a list of geological features or mountains which are single massive stones or rocks.

And the largest is Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock. It’s in the middle of Australia. It rises as one huge sandstone rock, some eleven hundred feet high, from the surrounding plain — although they say that a lot of the rock is actually underground — and the rock is about six miles in circumference at the level of the surrounding plain. If you’ve seen pictures, you can see how striking it is in colour. It actually seems to change colour with the sun, and it’s especially red at dawn and sunset. It is sacred to the Aboriginal people of the area. I’ve never been there; I’ve seen it in pictures and in movies.

Of the list they had of the fourteen largest rocks in the world, I have only seen one, and that is Stone Mountain, just outside Atlanta, Georgia. I was in Decatur, Georgia, one time on study leave at Columbia Theological Seminary, a seminary of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and for a day trip we went out to Stone Mountain. It is pretty big and impressive. There’s actually a train that goes up to the top of it. It’s about five miles in circumference and eight hundred and twenty-five feet above the surrounding area, and it has the largest bas-relief in the world, depicting Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

I was thinking about big rocks — big, immovable rocks or stones — as I was thinking about Jesus and his death and resurrection, because it seemed to me that Jesus was always struggling with big, immovable rocks. Metaphorically, anyway.

Not the least of which was religion: religion that kept the people from God; religion that oppressed people with rules and regulations; religion that favoured the rich, the racially pure; religion that favoured men; religion that separated people into clean and unclean; religion that favoured the clergy; and religion that allied itself with political power. That was a very big stone that Jesus was dealing with.

He also dealt with the rock of sin and hate and violence and prejudice. He said we’ve all come short of God’s glory, and failed to love our neighbours as ourselves. But he said the answer was not punishment, violence, exclusion and everlasting fire. The answer was love and forgiveness, peace and reconciliation.

And Jesus dealt with a huge rock we call death — the thing that threatens to undo us. It’s the only sure thing in life: death. And on Easter we celebrate that there’s something stronger than death. It’s love. You and I are loved in life and in death, and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not even our own death can separate us from God’s love. And we believe that Jesus is not dead, but is alive, and lives in you and me. Jesus lives wherever there’s love and kindness, wherever there’s peace, wherever there’s equality and justice, wherever there’s compassion.

So today I’m not going to focus so much on the rocks that Jesus faced and rolled away. I’m going to talk about our own resurrection. It’s the rocks in our own lives that hold stinking corpses and need to be rolled away.

Stephen Verney, in his book Water into Wine, which is about the Gospel of John, in the chapter where he’s dealing with the raising of Lazarus, tells this story. One of his friends, when he was younger, saw some boys in a village catch a couple of cats, tie their tails together, throw them over a clothesline, and watch as they literally fought to the death. That friend was filled with such horror that it remained with him all his life.

The point is, we all have horrors, pains, stories, memories, wounds, scars, prejudices, guilt and sin in our lives and in our minds. Maybe not as terrible as two cats fighting — but for some of us, maybe more terrible. So what are the rocks that you and I need rolled away from our lives? What inside still stinks, or is rotten, or is dead? What in your life needs resurrection?

About fifteen years ago — because I listen to books — I listened to the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson, published posthumously. The first in the series was entitled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a psychological thriller. There are two main protagonists. The first is Mikael Blomkvist, hired by the billionaire industrialist Henrik Vanger to look for his grandniece Harriet, who disappeared thirty-six years earlier during a family gathering. Blomkvist is aided by the other main protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, a computer hacker with a checkered past and a huge dragon tattoo.

It’s heavy reading, because it deals with explicit sex, rape, violence against women, the incompetence and cowardice of investigative journalists, the moral bankruptcy of big capital, and the virulent strain of Nazism still festering away in Swedish society. As one dear lady from the congregation, who is not able to attend any more but used to go to all kinds of movies, would say: it’s not a family movie; it’s dark and disturbing.

But it is one of the more interesting sets of novels I’ve ever consumed, and what I thought was interesting was the rock that Lisbeth was dealing with in her life. Part of the trilogy is Lisbeth coming to terms with the demons in her life and in her past, and in particular her father, who was not a nice man. And Lisbeth herself is abused and raped.

When I was listening to that chapter, I could hardly believe it. Most authors, if they’re dealing with difficult subjects like rape, don’t have the main protagonist raped. The main protagonist usually helps the victim, or finds the rapist, or solves the case — but the main protagonist is not usually the victim.

But you see, according to Wikipedia, Stieg Larsson himself said that when he was fifteen years old he witnessed a girl being sexually assaulted by three boys, and he did nothing. Her name was Lisbeth. Several days later he apologized for doing nothing, but she wouldn’t forgive him, and supposedly it bothered him for the rest of his life. And so he tried to roll the stone away by writing these novels.

Rolling stones away is not easy. As Martha reminds us, it stinks. But Jesus reminds us that in order to really live, we have to die first. In order to be resurrected, there has to be a corpse.

So what is the corpse in your life? What needs to be rolled away?

If you’re a woman, it’s very possible you know about inappropriate sexual remarks or comments from men. The statistics say probably a third of you have been sexually assaulted in your lifetime, and fifty percent of you sexually harassed. If you’re not white, the chances of you experiencing racism are pretty close to one hundred percent. Many, most of us, have experienced at some time in our life being hit or struck, or some other kind of violence. Most of us know what it’s like to be shunned or ridiculed or exploited by peers; children especially can be pretty hard on other children at times. Many of us have had family squabbles, fractures, conflicts, divorces, or been on non-speaking terms with members of our family. Some of us have done one or two, or a bunch of, things in our lives for which we’re truly ashamed, and we harbour a lot of guilt. And I could go on about the sorts of things we have done, or that have been done to us, that need to be rolled away.

But I want to speak about something more concrete, because it’s something that happened to me. I’ve already shared about conflict in the church before, and that’s one of the rocks I’ve had to deal with. But there’s another rock that I’ve had to deal with, one that you might not think about for me, and it’s insecurity.

You look at Harry, and maybe Harry doesn’t look that insecure. But it’s been a theme in my life. I don’t know whether it’s hard-wired into me, part of my genetic code, that I always worried about what others thought, or worried whether I was loved, accepted and fit in. Maybe it was that as a child I moved around a lot: I lived in a lot of different places between the ages of zero and ten, moving back and forth between different countries. Maybe it was that my mother went through a very difficult time when I was a child, in a marriage that was very rocky and split apart. Or maybe it was that I didn’t have a father around very much. Or maybe it was that my mother was a pleaser, who wanted everybody to like her, and I became the same thing as I grew up. I don’t know, and I’m not judging anyone. What I do know is I was insecure, and I have struggled with it all my life.

In fact, I have a story — I’ve probably told this story before. When I was four years old, I was living in England, and I had a snowsuit. I had a snowsuit because between the ages of two and four I’d lived in Calgary, where there was quite a bit of snow. In the winter of 1961 there was this one day, a freak snowstorm in Greasby, England, which was just on the other side of the river from Liverpool, and I got to wear my snowsuit.

The English kids had never seen a snowsuit, and I was demonstrating just how invulnerable I was by lying down in icy puddles. “I can’t feel it! No! I’m invincible!” I was Superman. I was amazing. I was a hero to all these children. But the truth is, I was freezing, wet and cold. I was playing the tough, strong, invulnerable guy.

And it’s a bit of a metaphor for Harry. I like to play the tough, strong, invulnerable guy, but actually inside I’m quite vulnerable, and often hurt, and I don’t always show it. It’s one of the rocks I’ve been rolling away from the tomb: my vulnerability.

I have a lot more healing now, because I found in Jesus a rock that I can count on: a love that never lets me down, a friend who is family, a peace that passes understanding, and forgiveness that is infinite and unending. And I have to say, I have a few people in my life who are the good kind of rocks — my children, my spouse, friends — who have helped me feel secure in their love and friendship. And after eighteen years in this congregation, I’m beginning to feel secure.

While on one level that’s partly joking, it isn’t a complete joke. Because when you’re insecure, whether it’s rational or not, you’re always looking over your shoulder, thinking about who might be out to get you. You wonder if the congregation still likes you, whether there’ll be a letter to presbytery about you, a note under the door telling you to leave. And you question whether you say the right thing, and do the right sermon, and whether you’re doing a good job.

Insecurity may not be abuse or violence, or two cats killing each other. But it isn’t about which rock is the worst rock. Today it’s about Jesus being here to lift whatever burden you have, to roll away whatever stones you have in your life, if you let him.

Because know this: we can’t roll all the stones away by ourselves. We need Jesus’ help.

But this is also true: Jesus can’t roll all the stones away unless we let him.

We have to work with Jesus on this. Sometimes it means admitting what stones are there. Sometimes it means we’ll go for professional help. Sometimes it means we’ll have to discipline ourselves, or surrender ourselves, or obey Jesus, obey his love. Sometimes we’ll have to sacrifice. It’s not like if you’re an alcoholic you can go to one AA meeting and say, “Oh, I’m done, it’s all over.” No. It’s a lifetime process, and you just take it one day at a time.

Rolling the stones away, rolling the rocks away, is a process, and you and Jesus have to work together. Prayer is really helpful. Because as you pray, as you talk to Jesus, as you uncover yourself, as you are honest, as you dig into the levels of your soul, you will find God. You will find strength. You will find insight. You will see paths to take. And you won’t be alone: you’ll feel the risen Jesus inside you. And it always helps to have friends, family, trusted people, a support system, and even professionals, to help unbind you and take away the grave cloths that constrict you.

I know Easter is a happy time. We’re going to sing the Hallelujah Chorus in a few minutes, and probably some of the kids today opened up Easter eggs, and there are family dinners for some — although it’s a lot more restricted this year. We’re full of joy, because Christ is risen.

But I also know there’s a whole lot of people in this world for whom Easter has not happened, and they feel like they’re still in a tomb. And even for Christians, there are lots of us who still have rocks to roll away.

Remember the first Easter. No marching band at the tomb. No chocolate. No choirs of angels singing hallelujah. There was a whole lot of confusion and fear and questions and uncertainty. The first people to the tomb couldn’t even process the good news. They had a hard time understanding it, believing it: the fact that the stone could be rolled away, and Jesus could be alive. “He is not here,” the angel said. No, he’s not in the tomb any more.

We believe that Jesus is raised, and Jesus is raised to live in you: to be your friend, to be your family, and to set you free to love, and to roll away the rocks in your lives. He has that power — to roll away stones of hurt and grief and insecurity and conflict and prejudice and sin, and so much more.

So if Easter has happened to you — if Christ is raised in you, if Christ lives in you — then I suggest you find someone who’s wrapped in grave cloths and help unbind them. Help them, with the power of Christ, roll away whatever stone keeps them from loving and being loved.

Amen.