Easter Sunday
Mark 16:1–8
“Overcome with terror and dread, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” They were expecting to find a corpse. And they knew how to handle a corpse. Early on the morning of the first Easter, those three women, Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and Salome, had come prepared with their spices and ointments. They had done this solemn duty before, prepared bodies for burial, and they would do it again. They had followed him all the way from Galilee to his death on a cross outside Jerusalem. And they came now to prepare his body for a proper burial. But it was not a corpse that they found, it wasn’t a dead body; instead they found a risen Lord. And they were afraid.
Now, a corpse does have certain advantages over a risen Lord. For example, a corpse is much easier to keep track of. It always stays just where you left it. It doesn’t go wandering off doing its own thing, leading people into places where they don’t want to go. And a corpse is much more predictable than a risen Lord is. It has a rather stable routine. A risen Lord, on the other hand, might do just about anything, without any warning or explanation. It might ask us for things that we don’t want to give or speak words we don’t want to hear. And a corpse is much less likely to cause trouble. A corpse stays in its proper place. But a risen Lord is always going where it’s not welcome, asking questions that we don’t want to answer, and pushing us into things that we would rather leave alone. No, a corpse is a much safer thing to have around than a risen Lord is.
And so it’s not so hard to understand why the women were afraid. If Jesus were dead, it was sad, it was demoralizing, but at least they knew what to expect. They could return to their routines and try to forget the pain of the last few days. They could go back to the way things had always been. But if Jesus was missing from the tomb, if Jesus was alive, then nothing was safe or stable or comfortable. Everything would be turned upside down. And so they were afraid.
And we are still afraid today, almost 2000 years later—afraid of where the Christ might lead us. Afraid of what he might ask of us, with whom he might tell us to associate. Just think of what he did before he was crucified. He broke all of society’s rules, consorted with sinners and prostitutes. He asked his disciples to leave everything behind, abandon their jobs and families, and follow him. He sent them out into the world with no money and no provisions. He asked them to feed the hungry, visit the prisoners, and set the oppressed free. He even wanted his followers to take up their crosses and follow him even to the death. If that’s what he was doing back then, what might he ask us to do today? No, that prospect is much too dangerous, much to unpredictable. It would be much better to have Jesus remain a nice, safe, predictable corpse, hidden behind a heavy stone.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t want to cooperate with our plan. Jesus doesn’t want to stay locked up in that tomb. But we still do our best to keep him contained with whatever stones we can find. We have to keep that unpredictable Christ walled up with whatever is available. We use rules and laws and bureaucracies to keep the needs of this world as anonymous as possible, as disconnected as possible, so that we won’t have to face the fact that real people are hurting and in need of the ministry to which Christ calls us. We use prejudices and hatreds to stir up enmity between people who should be brothers and sisters, fellow children of our common parent, God. We use greed and power and self-righteousness to convince ourselves that we are more deserving than those around us, to horde the best things for ourselves, and avoid Jesus’s words, “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers.”
These are the stones we use to keep Jesus walled away, locked up, hidden. We can’t afford to let him get out because… well, God knows what he might do if left to his own devices. He might just transform our world. He might force us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. He might demand control over our lives when we want to keep the control for ourselves. He might cause us to reach out in love to the world around us, when we would rather stick to our own wants and needs. He might overwhelm us with so great a resurrection power that we would hardly recognize the new creation we had become. No, it’s best to leave that stone firmly in place at the mouth of the tomb. Best to leave that sort of unpredictable power firmly locked away.
But it seems no matter how hard we try to keep Jesus in the grave, no matter how hard we try to tame and civilize him and his message of liberating good news, somehow we can’t avoid the question, “Who is going to roll the stone away?” Who is going to roll the stone away for us and release that uncontrollable, unwieldy resurrection power? Who’s going to set Christ free to be the radical Christ, turning our world up-side-down and right-side-up again?
We owe a great debt to other saints in the past who have worked to roll that stone away. Saints like Martin Luther King, who stood up to the forces of bigotry and oppression even at the risk of life and limb. Saints like Mother Teresa, who opened their hearts and hands to the lowest and the least. Saints like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, who crossed the barriers that society sets up between races, religions, nations, denominations, and social groups. Saints who sacrificed their own needs for the needs of others. Saints who prayed not only for their friends and family, but also for their enemies and those who stood against them.
But there is still work to be done today. There are still barriers that keep Christ locked away. But are we ready to address them? Are we ready to release Jesus in our own time? Are we too afraid, or do we have the courage to roll away those stones that keep Christ at a safe distance? Who will roll away the stone? Who will release Christ from the prisons of our own making? Who will stand at the grave and proclaim, “He is not here—he is alive and at work in the world!” Who will roll away the stone for us? Will it be you?