The Stone Unmoved
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
March 31, 2013
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
John 20: 1-18
Let us pray,
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
I'm
going to take a few liberties here, so please indulge me. Here is a reading
from a book by some guy name John.
Early
on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to
the tomb and saw that the stone was still in place. It was unmoved, so she went
to find someone to help her roll the stone away, so that she could anoint His
body with the oils she had brought. She could not have done it yesterday
because it was the Sabbath. She found two Roman Centurions and they helped her
move the stone. She entered the tomb, and found his body, beaten, pierced,
blood let, and dry from dehydration. She did her work and then returned to her
world unchanged, and her life no different, and her heart still a stone
unmoved.
This
is not the word of the Lord. . . Thanks be to God.
It's
not the word of the Lord, but it is what "should" have happened, and
certainly what "would" have happened, was there not truth, was Jesus
not Christ, was God not supreme in the world He created, even over what seems
so final to us, death, and was the world not created in love, with love, for
love, and by love. But how often do we live in the world that
"should" be and "would" have been, instead of the world
that is? Do we even almost 2000 years since Jesus was raised, take for granted
what Easter means? Has it lost its power to us? Does what is real seem unreal?
Do we again believe the lie, missing the truth because the false apparent seems
like it surrounds us completely? What would our world be like if Mary found the
stone unmoved? Sometimes you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. . . to
quote the Cinderella Song, so let's this morning for a moment imagine the stone
was not rolled away, and that what we celebrate on this wonderful and beautiful
holiest of days never actually happened.
If
there was no resurrection of Christ, what would our world be like? Obviously
the first difference would be that death would not have been defeated. The
grave would still reign in this world. It would not necessarily prove that God
isn't powerful over death, just that Jesus wasn't. For, yes we would certainly
question the Christness of Jesus. Could he be the Messiah without conquering
death? He certainly did not conquer Rome, which is what many were expecting him
to do. What is Jesus without Easter? Even if he did raise Lazarus, and raised a
little girl, if he couldn't raise himself is all lost? Is all of it a lie?
Because at least this was a lie. For Jesus said he would be raised, multiple
times, and aggressively so, check out Matthew 16:21-28:
21 From that
time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and
undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and
scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter
took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must
never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get
behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your
mind not on divine things but on human things.” [1]
He does it repeatedly,
again and again, whether it's talking explicitly about being raised from the
dead or symbolically about tearing down the temple and building it back three
days later. If he is not raised from the dead, at least this part of what he is
saying becomes a lie. And why the lie? Does Jesus not have the power? Does he
misunderstand his mission, his purpose, his identity? Is he overall a
fraud? These are the questions, because
these are the questions that history will ask him, and his followers if he has
any left (Time out: They ask them now don't they and there are witnesses to his
being raised. Time In). And what do they mean when they ask, what is their
agenda when they ask? Now that they've attacked the man, they next go for the
message and try to destroy it. It's the way our world works. Hypocrisy, fraud,
lying: It takes down the greatest of men. People use it to challenge their message.
Critics of The Civil Rights Movement brought up Martin Luther King's
infidelity, how can a man of God commit such sin, does that mean that his work
for civil rights isn't real. Thomas Jefferson's slave holding, how can such a
man write about all men being created equal, having the inalienable right of
liberty? So Imagine how they will come for Christ and his message. Would they
go straight for the sermon on the mount? Maybe the parables? But the crux of it
would be, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever
believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Guess not. I
guess that everlasting life thing is out, but would it just the life part, or
the God loving the world part, as well? What exactly again are we supposed to
believe in?
Because
that is part of the question, one of the things we take for granted, but
certainly comes from the credibility of Jesus' message. The entire world
beloved of God, not just one chosen people, these are some of the things we
wouldn't know. What about things like loving
your neighbor as yourself? Sure the concept of reciprocity is found in
other philosophies, it's there in the Analects
of Confucius, though typically translated "never do to another
something you would not like them to do to you." There is a slight
difference, not doing, rather than the mandate to actively love. Sure but what
is love without a resurrected Jesus? Is it just a self indulgent emotion, or a second
hand emotion, as Tina Turner sang, what's love got to do with it anyway? Love
can be mushy and emotional, but it misses the power and the strength of truth,
the power and the strength of being the fabric of the world. It's just like any
other part of life, finite, mortal, destined to die.
Now
what if the message somehow did stand up. Maybe the disciples or others were
good enough salesmen to keep the message going without the resurrection. Maybe
the teachings were good enough news for the poor that they would still resonate
throughout the centuries. Without the resurrection though, what separates the
Christian philosophy from others? I started thinking that I would compare this
resurrectionless Christianity to other philosophies, but when I started to try,
I couldn't decide which parts of Jesus' teachings would be left after the ideas
of Resurrection were gone. So many of them are tied to God having the power
over death. Without it we are left with a couple of Roman Philosophies, just
with a slightly different moral code holding it up. What's left is just classic
Stoicism, a philosophy built on the basis that life on this Earth is it. Stoics
believed in living virtuously with no hope for reward, virtue itself is the
reward. You just now assume Jesus' definition of virtue, self sacrifice and
living for the other, but there is no how for reward, and I don't just mean
heaven, I mean on this Earth, too. Part of the power of the teaching of Jesus
is that his teaching is based in God, the creator, and that following Christ's
example is the way human beings are supposed to be, originally were, and can be
again. Without the resurrection, is that still true? Is the world like that or
isn't it? How do we know?
What
about the concept of the lost sheep, the importance of the one? Is that out the
window? Because this teaching is revolutionary in the world. In Judaism the
individual is secondary to the nation. In Eastern Philosophies like Buddhism,
Taoism, and Confucianism the individual functions just as a part of the
collective. For the Hindu, there is an eternal self that lasts forever, but
each individual life is meaningless when compared with the limitless of
infinity. But in Christianity, the lost sheep are important, each one, and each
one made in the image of God. . . is that lost, too? Think of the effect of on
history? All the concepts of individual liberty, individual rights, individual
dignity, do they still exist? It is often debated as whether the United States
is a Christian nation, it may not be, but without the resurrection, there is no
way that history creates it. It doesn't happen, where does that leave us.
Christ's
resurrection is such a pivotal moment in the history of the World. It has so
affected everything in our world, that it is almost impossible to begin to
picture what life would be like without it having happened. But it did, and
today we celebrate and commemorate that it did. . . and so now we are ready to
read John's Gospel 20:1-18, which truly says:
20
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene
came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So
she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus
loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do
not know where they have laid him.” 3 Then Peter and the other
disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running
together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5
He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he
did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into
the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth
that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up
in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the
tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they
did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then
the disciples returned to their homes.
11
But Mary stood weeping outside the
tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 and she
saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at
the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why
are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not
know where they have laid him.” 14 When she had said this, she
turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was
Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are
you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if
you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him
away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in
Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her,
“Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to
my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to
my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the
disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these
things to her. [2]
And
the world was forever changed. Love does have power over death. Love is the
stuff that holds the world together, the very means of its creation. God does
so love the world. Jesus is his only begotten son. His sacrifice was made, and
was sufficient, and eternal life abounds. Christ defeated death because he can.
Death is not final because its realness is merely a shadow in the light of God.
And therefore, whosoever believeth will live into that truth, eternally. And
therefore we should love God, and we should love our neighbor, because that is
what we were made to do. All of Jesus' teachings stand up, without exception.
Blessed are the meek, faith like that of a mustard seed can move a mountain,
welcoming a child is the way to be truly great, forgiveness reigns, we
shouldn't cast the first or any stone, we can't see with a plank in our eye,
until we take it out we cannot judge, we must love our enemies, go the extra
mile, turn the other cheek, feed his sheep, baptize all nations, pray as he
taught us, and not hide our light under a bushel, and be the salt of the earth,
build a city on a hill, built safely on the solid rock of Christ, and not the
shifting sand, we should be fertile soil for the truth, be born again in the
spirit, to not live by bread alone, to constantly seek the truth, to pray
without ceasing, to ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, and
therefore find and we will keep on finding, we should arise take up our mat and
walk, go and do likewise, go and sin no more, be not afraid and fear not, for
Christ is with us, and with us still because he was raised and lives in our
world risen. And will leave the 99 to go and find the one, will slay the fatted
calf for the one, will rejoice when just one repents. . . God is a personal
God, and the salvation brought into this world through the resurrection is a
personal salvation. We are just that important, individually to God, just that
important and made for something. Created, redeemed, and sustained, set free to
love, the stone closing our heart has been rolled away, so now we can love, and
love as Christ does, and the example of His love is giving all, sacrificing
all, carrying our crosses, leaving everything to follow, for this is the
resurrection definition of love, but in the resurrection world love is
connected with faith and hope, the possibilities are infinite because they are
of God, God loves us, and there simply are no limits to what God can do. . .
none, this I know for the Resurrection tells me so. Thanks be to God, Christ is
Risen, Alleluia, Amen, it is so!
