Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church
Auburn WA, April 12, 2009 – Easter Sunday
by Gregory S. Kaurin, Senior Pastor
“Rolling Stones”
The stone—some archeologists suggest—the stone covering Jesus’ tomb was probably 1 to 2 tons. It’s kind of humorous (but makes it so real) that the women were halfway to the tomb before it occured to one of them to ask the other, “How in the world are we going to move it?” ...Details.
So you can imagine their surprise to find it already rolled aside. Our translation says they were alarmed. The Greek was ek-thambeo, which meant they were out- or beyond astonished; stupefied would be a good word for it, dumbfounded perhaps.
Mark’s gospel says that entering the tomb they only find a young man, a teenager, actually. He sees their faces and tells them, “Don’t be ek-thambeo, don’t be dumbfounded over this. Jesus told you this would happen. Look, it’s empty! He’s not here.”
The stone wasn’t rolled aside to let Jesus out. It was moved for the sake of the women, to let them in, to see this simple message that death had been emptied of its power. The tomb was empty.
And the boy’s next message started the evangelical stone rolling. “Look,” he says, “but don’t stop, go out, quickly tell Peter and the others around him.” Christ is the rejected stone of Psalm 118, rejected by the builders and now the foundational cornerstone, but unlike the Temple building, he is a Resurrected, Living, and Moving Stone: “Go out!”
I pray that Christianity never succeeds as an establishment gathering moss, but always as a movement.
Verse 8 of Mark ends with the women running from the tomb. Gripped by a trembling fear they were unable—at least for a while—they were unable to talk to anyone until they got far away from the tomb.
We take it almost for granted, but I know for a fact that if I had been there with them that first Easter, with the moved stone, the creepy boy in a tomb with a weird message? I’d have been spooked out of my mind, way ahead of them, running.
But these women had been there at the Cross, after most of Jesus’ men had fled; they had been there when he was laid in the tomb; and now they were the first to hear the hair-raising powerful message of the Resurrection.
As we read this story of the first two people in the world to be confronted with the fact of the empty tomb and the Risen Christ, two imperatives spring out.
First, they were urged to believe. To look for themselves and believe. The thing is so staggering that it might seem beyond belief, too good to be true. The boy reminds them of all that Jesus had promised, and confronts them with the empty tomb; his every word calls them to believe.
Second, they were urged to share. "Go, tell!" Here at Messiah, we are a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It is that first word that is the important one in that title. So my second prayer is that we learn more and more what it means to be Evangelical, sharing the Good News of Salvation by Grace through Faith in Jesus Christ, with those all around us who need to hear and experience the love of God for themselves.
Easter may have started with those two women at the tomb, but it hasn’t stopped yet!
Like those two women bursting from the tomb, and with Christ as our Rolling Cornerstone, we rise up from our griefs and tears. We live in Easter now, and in the power of resurrected lives.
Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is no longer dead.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
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