[Remember ... the members have been placing stones at the foot of the cross for the past seven weeks of Lent and the pile of stones around the bases has gotten pretty impressive ... powerful visual. But when they come in on Easter morning, the stones are all gone.]
[Read Luke 15:11-24.]
You’ve probably never thought of the Parable of the Prodigal Son as an Easter story but I do. It is a glorious story of resurrection, of a new life, a new beginning. What makes it an Easter parable … or story, if you will … is the One telling it. You see, even though the father of the Prodigal Son saw him coming from a long way off, the father in Jesus’ parable waited until the son came home and when he saw him coming down the road, he pulled up the hem of his robe and ran to greet him, hugging him and covering him with kisses. Instead of lecturing his son or punishing him by making him work as a servant or a slave to pay back his debt, he ordered that the fatted calf be slain and held a huge party.
As I said, what makes this an Easter parable for me is the One telling it. God didn’t just pace nervously back and forth in Heaven waiting for us to come to our senses and return to Him. We were so far from Him and so lost in the big city … the world … that there was no way for us to find our way back … and so, He emptied Himself … He poured Himself into the confines of a human body and He came to us … hoping to wake us up from the hypnotic slumber of the world and show us the way home … the way back to Him.
And thank God. When I came to my senses … on my knees in the middle of a pig pen … Jesus was standing there with arms outstretched, ready to hug me and smother me with kisses and welcome me home … and then I learned what He had to do to come and find me. Well, He didn’t have to come and “find” me … I was the one who was lost … He always knew right where I was … but still … what He did … emptying Himself and taking on a form that I could recognize, that I could relate to … and then going to the cross and personally paying the debt for my disobedience and high-living. I will never understand the depth, the height, the width of His love but I will be forever grateful … not just praising Him and telling Him how grateful I am but showing Him.
One of the many poignant moments that I experienced on my trip to the Holy Land was when we visited a tomb like the one that Jesus was buried in. I say “like” because we don’t know where the exact tomb is or was … it could have been the one that they were showing us. It didn’t matter … it was a tomb like the one that I saw … a stunning visual I can assure you as we heard the story of Joseph and some of Jesus’ followers laying Jesus’ body on bench carved into the side of the tomb … His body wrapped in linen … the stone being rolled in front of the opening … and the Roman guards moving into position and standing guard at the entrance.
A lot of images and paintings of the tomb show Jesus stepping out of the tomb but the reality is that the opening to these tombs were very small and He would have had to stoop down to get through the entrance and then stand up … and I think that beautifully describes the Easter story … God left His throne in Heaven … stooped down to enter into our world … and then stood up … rising to His former glory after what happened on the cross.
The reason the entrance of the tomb is small is, well, very practical. Carving out a tomb with primitive tools was a lot of work … and very expensive … which is why John points out how a person with a title … like Joseph of Arimathea … was able to provide a “new tomb in which no one had ever been laid” (John 19:41) in a beautiful garden. We don’t know much about Joseph of Arimathea except that he was from some town called Arimathea … which is Hebrew for “A City of the Jews.” Scholar don’t know exactly where Arimathea was in Jesus’ day but we do know that Joseph must have been a man of wealth and means. He could afford to have a tomb carved out of solid rock, he was a member of the ruling religious elite, and apparently had some political connections and some pull with Pilate.
The fact that the tomb was new is significant. As we all know, dead bodies were to be avoided at all costs … but, as I pointed out … tombs were expensive and were usually paid for and used by families rather than for a single individual. As you can imagine, a tomb can only hold so many bodies or bones, so the Jews would place the body in a tomb, wait a year for the flesh to decompose, and then place their relative’s bones in a special box called an “ossuary” to make room for any future relatives. Even though the person was dead before they placed them in the tomb, the thought that there were or had been other dead bodies in there before yours or some precious loved one … well, it was gross. Joseph of Arimathea’s offer was extremely gracious … letting a stranger … a non-family member … be the first to lay in their newly carved tomb and it symbolically attested to the purity of the Sacrificial Lamb of God that even in death He remained ritually pure and without blemish. It also spared Jesus’ body the ignominy of being thrown in the burning garbage heap outside of Jerusalem where all the bodies of criminals … like the two that were crucified with Jesus … were unceremoniously left to rot and burn. Jewish custom held that a body must be prepared and buried within a day. Bodies left out in the open, like those thrown into the fires of Gehenna, were exposed so that wild animals and birds could prey upon their flesh. Cremation also meant that the person could not be resurrected because, well, they had no body to resurrect. Just as God had prepared a place for His Son and His Disciples to celebrate the Passover in advance, He had also prepared a special place for His Son’s body to be buried.
The aversion to touching a dead body was … and is, I imagine … so strong among the Jews that they would white-wash the tombs and the stones covering the tombs where dead bodies were laid to let people know to avoid getting too close … which, I have to mention here … renders a better understanding of what Jesus meant when He called some of the Pharisees “white-washed tombs” (Matthew 23:27). We associate “white” with purity and we tend to think of white-washing as a way of covering up something ugly and dirty … which makes sense from our perspective because Jesus called them tombs filled with dead men’s bones but from the perspective of Jesus’ listeners, He was calling them impure, polluted, and their fine clothes, like the white-wash used to warn people to avoid certain impure areas, was a warning to His followers to avoid the peacocking Pharisees who were eager to show off their wealth and false piety.
As I said, the small entrance was practical. The bigger the entrance, the larger the stone needed to cover it … the larger the stone … which was carved into the shape of a wheel … the harder it would be to roll. The stone used to cover the entrance rolled in a track carved into the ground. So … I want you to picture the stone covering the entrance of the tomb. It would be about this high [waist high]. You would stand behind it and push it and it would literally roll along the track carved into the ground. But now I want you to picture it from the inside. There’s just a flat, stone surface. Nothing to push … nothing to grab ahold of … no way to roll the stone from the inside … and why would anybody need a way to roll the stone from the inside, right? Why would they want to get out … they’re dead … which is why it made sense to Mary that someone had to have rolled the stone away and stole Jesus’ body. Jesus was dead, so He couldn’t have done it. Why would somebody do that unless they intended to either steal or desecrate the body … a horror beyond comprehension … but, given the hatred of some of Jesus’ enemies … not beyond the realm of possibility … except that the last thing the religious leaders and Pilate wanted was for Jesus’ body to disappear … hence sealing the entrance of the tomb and the posting of Roman guards in front of it.
So … Jesus our cornerstone … the foundation of our church and the rock upon which our faith is built … is sealed inside a stone by men with hearts of stone who had attempted to use God’s eternal law carved in stone to convict Jesus but …
When Jesus breathed His last and cried out, says Matthew, “the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks split” (Matthew 27:51). The earth shook and the rocks split. Do you think that a stone at the entrance of a tomb could hold the very God of the universe? Only if He wanted it to … just as the body that He poured Himself into … the flesh that He took on … could only hold Him for as long as He wanted it to … just, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago … the Temple could contain the Spirit of the Lord or a portion of the Spirit of the Lord only for as long as the Lord of the Universe wanted it to, amen?
Did Jesus roll back the stone from the inside? Did God roll it back with the same finger that He wrote the Ten Commandments in the tablets? Did an angel or some angels roll the stone away? Who cares? Why get lost in the particulars, amen? The image of the stone being rolled away and the tomb being empty is why we celebrate today. It’s why we call ourselves “Christians.” If Jesus were just another of many prophets back then … if Jesus’ bones were still in some ossuary as some have tried to claim … would we have ever heard about Him? Would His teachings have been carefully written down and preserved for thousands of years? I doubt it … I strongly doubt it very, very much, don’t you?
But the earth shook. The rocks split. The Temple curtain was torn in half. And the tomb was empty. What is significant isn’t just Jesus’ power to shake the earth or split rocks or roll away the stone in front of His tomb … as impressive as that is … but the fact that Jesus did not need Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb any longer! Yes! God is stronger than any rock. God is stronger than any storm. God is stronger than any religious leader or governor or king! God is stronger than any fallen angel, amen? God is stronger than death! “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? But thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1st Corinthians 15:55, 57) … can I get a big amen here?
Now … each of the four gospels tell the story of Easter morning a bit differently. In Matthew, Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” went to see the tomb (Matthew 28:1). In Luke’s gospel, a group of women went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices (Luke 24:1). In Mark’s gospel, three women … Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome … brought spices to anoint Jesus and on their way they wondered, “Who will roll away the stone for us at the entrance to the tomb?” (Mark 16:3). In John’s gospel, however, Mary Magdalene goes alone while it is still dark (John 20:1). I don’t thing she went there to anoint His body … she would come back with the other women later when it was light and there was someone around who could help them roll back the stone. She goes there alone in the dark to grieve. When someone we love very deeply dies, we need to spend time with our family and friends who love us and comfort us … but there also comes a time when we must face our grief alone and feel it … and, to be honest, grief is always a personal, individual thing … and those of us who have gone through it know what I’m talking about. A true friend is not someone who tries to take away your pain or distract you from your grief but knows when to stand beside you in your grief or give you room to feel your grief … letting you know that they are there for you should you need them.
As Mary heads towards the tomb, the darkness of the world around her reflects the darkness and the emptiness that she feels inside. She doesn’t worry about who’s going to roll the stone back. She’s not there for that. She just wants to be there … to be alone with Jesus for little while … but when she gets there! The unthinkable has happened. The stone has been rolled away and the body of Jesus is gone! What else could she think? What else could she do but run back to the others and tell them the horrifying news! Someone has broken into the tomb where Jesus is laid and have taken His body God-knows-where and done God-knows-what with it. The news is so horrifying and unbelievable that Peter and John run back to the tomb to see what Mary was talking about with their own eyes … and to their dismay, they see what Mary saw … the stone rolled away and Jesus’ body gone.
Ahhh … I want you to pause right here and picture Mary … alone … standing in front of the tomb with the stone rolled away and think about this. When Jesus was placed in the tomb, a heavy stone was rolled in front of the entrance … separating Him from the people that He loved and the people who loved Him. Isn’t that what death does? It presents a barrier between us and those we love. In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus described death as a “great chasm” (Luke 16:26). The rich man could see Lazarus but he couldn’t touch him and Lazarus couldn’t come to him or touch him either … just as we can see our loved one in our memories … in our mind’s eye … but we can’t touch them and they can’t touch us … unless!
Unless someone or “Someone” can bridge this great chasm between life and death for us, amen? Someone who could remove the stone that was separating Mary from Jesus. The stone, like death, was a barrier between Jesus that she could not remove … but Someone could … Jesus Christ … whom no tomb could hold and to whom death was no barrier. And as she weeps and wonders what happened … He stands before her and calls her by her name: “Mary.” What a moment, amen?
Not all tombs are made of stone, my friend. In fact, some of the strongest tombs are the ones that we can’t see. Stones and rocks can be seen … they can be touched … they can be moved … they can be smashed with tools and machines … blown up with dynamite … but the tombs that we make with our hearts and with our minds can only be opened by the divine, supernatural power of God Himself.
There is the tomb of addiction … be it food, drugs, alcohol, pornography, shopping, gambling … whatever puts a barrier between you and God by replacing God with whichever addiction you make your idol … that you count on to make you happy instead of God or help you to ignore your problems rather than face them because you have no god or at least give you oblivion if it can’t give you strength or guidance.
At the start of every AA meeting, they read a section from the Alcoholics Anonymous book called “How it Works” where, among many things, it says: “Remember that we deal with alcohol – cunning, baffling, powerful. Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power – that One is God” (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 33). At the end of “How it Works” is a thing that we call the ABCs.
(A) That we were alcoholic and could not manage own lives
(B) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(C) That God could and would if He were sought. (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 33).
No human power could have relieved my alcoholism … but God could and would and He did. But that wasn’t the only tomb I had put Jesus in and covered with a stone. There was the tomb of my pride and arrogance … the belief that I didn’t need God. I wanted to be my own god … deciding for myself what was right or wrong for me. And the burden of running my own universe was frightening and lonely.
There was the tomb of my ignorance. I read the Bible … sort of … pieces of it in Sunday school … random bits from listening to sermons … from taking a few college classes … or watching movies like “The Ten Commandments,” “Quo Vadis,” “The Robe,” or “Jesus Christ, Superstar.” I am living proof that a little bit of knowledge can be a very dangerous and sometimes fatal thing that eventually forced me to my knees in my own filth and misery … which in many ways is a lot worse than kneeling in the filth of a pig pen … and not think about or ponder filling my mind with the garbage that the world feeds us but actually gorging on it until I made myself sick … and then came that glorious moment when Jesus got down in the filth with me and called my name and I came to my senses. He alone had the power to roll away the stone of arrogance that separated me from Him. He took away the stumbling blocks that my mind put in the way of me having a true and genuine relationship with Him.
What tomb have you put Jesus in? What stone, what stumbling blocks, have you erected between you and Jesus? Is it the tomb of grief? Do you believe that your grief is so deep that nobody can reach you to pull you out of it? Let me tell you, my friend, you are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. There is no grief so deep, so profound that Jesus isn’t willing to get down in that pit of despair with you and lift you out.
Have you sealed Jesus up in the tomb of your ambition because you know He won’t approve of what you might have to do to get ahead or achieve the goal that your ambition … and not God … has set for you?
Have you sealed Jesus up in the tomb of your lust because you can’t stand the thought of Him looking you in the eye? Have you sealed Him up in the tomb of your fear because you don’t believe that He’ll be there for you when you need Him most or you feel that what you fear most is too much even for God to handle or that your sins are too great and too many for God to ever forgive you? Have you sealed God up in your tomb of anger because you felt He wasn’t there for you in the past or that He doesn’t love you so you turn your back Him because you believe He’s turned His back on you … or you want to beat Him to the punch and turn your back on Him before He has a chance to turn His back on you?
There are lots and lots of ways that we can put Jesus in a tomb and roll a stone over it, but there is no tomb strong enough, my friend, no stone too heavy that Jesus can’t smash it to pieces. Look at the foot of the cross and what do you see? All those stones that you put there at the foot of the cross? Gone! Like Jesus asked the woman caught in adultery, “Where are your accusers, my friend?” The stones that used to weigh us down? Gone. The stones we used to judge others? Gone. The stones that others wanted to use against you? Gone. The stones that you wanted to use against yourself? Gone.
Take some time right now to remember the tombs that you have put Jesus in in the past. Right now, take some time to get honest with yourself about the tombs that you still have Jesus sealed up in. [Long pause.]
And then I want you to look at the cross and hear Him calling your name. [Pause.] That my, friend, is what Easter is all about, amen?
The stones … hard and cold … replaced by the warmth and joy of God’s love and mercy and grace and the cross is where God made that possible. [At this point, invite people to put a flower in the blooming cross … the same cross where they had been laying their stones/sins for the past seven weeks.]
Happy Easter, my friends. Thanks be to God. Amen!
