Rolling Away Stones

ROLLING AWAY STONES

Easter Morning begins in darkness

A darkness of despair and disillusionment

A darkness of “Why did He die?” and “What will happen now?”

A darkness in the heart of a mother who has lost her son

A darkness in a group of followers who have lost their leader

But into every darkness comes a light

At first faint

Then growing in strength and clarity

As shadows are dispelled

And darkness recedes

And morning breaks

A stone is rolled away

And a tomb is found to be empty

And as in the days of the prophet Isaiah “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light”

-Stephen Ring (1998)

AND THEY ASKED EACH OTHER, “WHO WILL ROLL THE STONE AWAY FROM THE ENTRANCE OF THE TOMB?” BUT WHEN THEY LOOKED UP, THEY SAW THAT THE STONE, WHICH WAS VERY LARGE, HAD BEEN ROLLED AWAY.

MARK 16:3-4

To understand why this passage has come to have significance for me, you need to understand something about my reaction to the first Easter sunrise service I attended here at a local cemetery

I don’t like cemeteries-I actually had a fear of cemeteries as a child. The first death I had to deal with as a child was my grandmother, the second was my grandfather, and in 1980 my mother died very suddenly and unexpectedly. The first Easter Sunrise service in recent memory I went to was in 1991, and in one part of my being, I honestly didn’t want to go, because that was the first time I was in this cemetery since my mother died. I don’t believe in going to gravesites after a death of a loved one, because I don’t believe that the essence of what makes up a person is here in a grave any more.

You need to understand these things about me in order to understand why these verses have had such an impact on me.

I want to consider those women going to the tomb that first Easter Sunday morning.

I expect they didn’t want to be there in some secret place of their heart either. They were dumbfounded and disillusioned at the loss of the Master. But they desired to perform this one last act of service, of respect, to the body of the man they had followed, listened to and served for the past several months. They were filled with despair---remember the events of that first Easter were in the process of unfolding. They didn’t know the story like we do.

Then we read in Mark’s account that one of them suddenly has a horrible thought. “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

Has that ever happened to you? Have you had a desire to serve the Lord, a longing to be able to fill some need, some vacancy, and yet you were stopped up short by the realization that there existed a great obstacle, a stone, which was very large in your path. Maybe it’s a stone of uncertainly, a stone of depression, a stone of lack of confidence. In despair and frustration you say, “Well, that’s that! I can’t do this!” “I’m too young” or “I’m too old” or “I’d just fall on my face.”.

We are really good at finding the obstacles in our path, and we often detour around them, or stop trying. I have come to believe that when God gifts a person in a particular area of ministry, and if that person, recognizing that gift and is willing to offer up that gift to God, that God in turn will cause the imaginary stones on our paths to disappear, or He, through His grace and power, and sometimes through others, will roll away a stone that is an obstacle in our Christian walk.

Look at verse 4. But when they looked up, they saw that the stone which was very large had been rolled away.

The perceived problem didn’t exist. The stone had already been rolled away, and it is clear that no human agency accomplished the task. I love how Mark describes the stone ----it was a large-it was big and heavy and cumbersome and beyond the capability of man’s strength to be moved.

God moves stones. He moves stones and obstacles in our lives. Situations can come together in a marvellous way. {Illustrations -Powells move here and the preparations of God in taking them to locations near water-the things that they desire in a home-the whole landed immigration process-the timing of the sale of their house}

God removes exterior “stones” as it were, and if they not meant to be moved, He gives the grace and strength to bear the burden of those stones.

But God removes interior “stones” as well. Stones of anger, Stones of stubbornness, Stones of frustration to give us hearts of love, hearts of patience, hearts filled with peace.