Who will roll away the stone?

Who will roll away the Stone?

Father Mullen, Easter Day 2015.

Once years ago I was a part of a long procession that covered a route of several kilometers, and went from a quaint village church on the Eastern Cape of South Africa, leading out of town, and proceeding to the bishop’s compound where a new, mostly outdoor cathedral had been built.  The village church had a congregation that was mostly white.  But many of the Anglicans in that diocese were out in bush churches in the region once called the Transkei, a long, long way from town, and most of those congregations were made up of black people.  I had not ever been involved in such a procession (walking and singing) that covered such a distance, and neither had the white folks from the village church.  In fact, most of them stayed behind: this was not their thing.  But the black folks knew how to make a proper procession.  There were crosses held high, and there was singing and ululating, and sometimes it was hard to tell if we were walking or dancing, so rhythmic was the movement of the men and women in that procession.  And the harmonies were strong, and the weather was clear, and no one was in hurry to get anywhere.

As I said, the route covered something like 4 or 5 kilometers, I don’t know how long was the line of worshipers stretched out along that route.  It is the only outdoor procession I have ever been in that actually picked up people along the way and grew bigger, rather than losing people, and steam, and getting smaller as you go, as happens when we try to do this sort of thing in urban America.  It was amazing!

But it was also long!  And, as I said, no one was in much of a hurry.  And from time to time the procession would stop, and someone would be called on to preach for a bit.  It wasn’t just the clergy who were called on – in fact, I’m sure I never was: they could tell that this was not my milieu!  The whole procession would just stop and someone would stand up on a bank by the side of the road and start to preach.  And the shouts and the “Amens!” would be offered from those who listened on the roadside.  And we’d stop and listen for as long as the group could tolerate it, as long as the preacher held their interest, and when that interest began to wane, someone would shout out, “It’s time for a chorus!”  And the singing would begin – usually some English hymn in four-part harmony - and the preacher would be drowned out, and would have to shut up, and the procession would move on (singing and swaying), and everybody knew it was for the best that the preaching had come to an end.  It’s a brilliant system!

And this went on and on. 

I can’t remember much specific about the preaching on that dirt road in the Diocese of Umzimvubu on the Eastern Cape of South Africa, except that I remember there was a theme that all the preachers were to share, somehow this had been worked out and understood in advance.  And while I can’t remember the details of the preaching, I can remember the theme, as we stopped by the roadside under the warm sun, on the outskirts of the village, and the theme was this: Who will roll away the stone?  The Easter question: Who will roll away the stone from the tomb?

Two specific things I can remember about those little homilies that were preached by men and women in thick, lilting accents.  I remember that many of the preachers talked about the stone that closed the tomb not as an historical object, but as an obstacle in daily life that needed to be rolled away from our hearts.  And I remember that at one point, as we were paused by the side of the road, a friend of mine from Australia, for whom this was also a new experience, turned to me with a wink and said, “If they wouldn’t keep rolling the stone back we could get there a whole lot faster!”

Who will roll away the stone from the entrance of the tomb?  Oh, who will roll away the stone?  This is the question with which Easter begins.  And it seems to us like a rhetorical question, especially since we already know the answer: no worries, the stone has been rolled away!  But if you look at the scriptures, you will see that St. Mark, who whose Gospel was the first of the four to be written, puts the question on the lips of the women who are making their way to the tomb.  St. Matthew provides a direct answer, asserting that “an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.”  Saints Luke and John simply allow that the stone has been rolled away by the time the women get there.  But for all four evangelists the stone is noteworthy.  For the women it must have been a real concern, and the evangelists know this.  How the women thought they were going to deal with it, I cannot imagine; maybe they thought they’d sit outside the tomb until some burly men came along to roll the stone away.

The stone is the first and most obvious obstacle to the Resurrection.  Clearly it is a potential obstacle to the women who want to get into the tomb.  But of course, we imagine that the stone is also the thing that would have prevented Jesus from escaping his tomb.  And in the event, the stone accomplished neither thing – prevented neither exit from nor entrance to the tomb - but still the stone is a detail of all four Gospel accounts of the resurrection.

As a literary device the stone, of course, stands for all the things that make the resurrection unlikely, unbelievable, and unexpected – an obstacle to the resurrection.

But I think there were insights to be found about that stone on the dusty road in South Africa.  I think the stone is included as an important detail for our sakes – because there are still so many obstacles to the resurrection in our lives.  There are obstacles, of course, to believing that Jesus could really get out of the tomb, could rise from the dead; and there are obstacles for us to be able to get inside and see for ourselves that he is risen.  And I vaguely remember that that’s how the preaching went on that warm day in the procession.  There is a stone in front of your heart that keeps the risen Lord from getting to you, and that keeps you from getting to him – who will roll away that stone?  Who will roll it away?  You can decide for yourself if this assertion is true.  (I suspect it is for most of us.)

And of course, my Australian friend had a different take on the stone – we keep rolling it back in front of the tomb: we keep replacing the chief obstacle to the resurrection, as though we want to keep the tomb closed up; as though we want to keep Jesus inside, and us outside; as though we are not ready for this new thing that Jesus is going to do in the world and in our lives.  We keep rolling back the stone, and it takes us longer to get where we are going than it needs to.

But I want to add a third possibility to these insights, so here it is: you are the stone, and I am the stone.  We are the principal obstacles to the resurrection.  We are the thing that is most likely to keep Jesus in the tomb, most likely to keep those who seek him out.  I say this, because when it comes to our relationship with God, we are often like big lumps of stone.  We are not good at tending to that relationship.  We don’t know how to talk with God and we don’t know how to listen to God.  We don’t know how to do the things we think we ought to do, and we are not sure we even want to do the things we “ought to do.”  We are like big lumps of stone.  We turn our backs to Jesus, and if that keeps him dead and buried, well then so be it.  And we are so silent about Jesus (silent as stones) that we could never be accused of allowing anyone access to the good news that he is risen!  We are big lumps of stone: awkward, heavy, and stupid.

How’s that for an Easter message?

Well, of course, that’s not really the Easter message; it’s just the context for it.

The Easter message becomes clear as the sun rises, and some women are moving cautiously, sadly, mournfully from their homes to a tomb, with that famous question on their minds: Who will roll away the stone?  This is a small and sad procession, and they have no ready answer for their question, and certainly nothing to sing about.  And they are expecting to encounter you and me – big, heavy, dopey, silent, stupid stones who are the chief obstacles that morning between them and the body of their Lord, the dead and buried body of Jesus.  Who will roll away the stone, they wonder?

And the good news of Easter begins with this unexpected surprise: the stone (that’s you; that’s me) is not in the way.  The stone has been pushed or pulled, or lifted, or somehow pried, coaxed, or levitated out of the way.  The obstacle to the Resurrection – the obstacle to Jesus – is no obstacle at all!

Whatever is going on in your life this Easter morning, it would be reasonable to expect that you would have showed up, whether you knew it or not, as an obstacle to the Resurrection, as an obstacle to hope, and to new life, and to the possibility that things are not the way they appear to be (they are much, much better, in fact).  Yes, it would be reasonable to expect you and me to show up on Easter morning and feel just like the big, bulky, stupid stones we sometimes seem to be, or think we are.

And if your heart has been heavy, you might have shown up with this question in your mind: who will roll away the stone?  Who will roll away the stone from the dark, dead places of my soul, of the nations, of the whole entire universe?  Who will roll away the stone?  Who can make me less of a stone, less of an obstacle, less of a heavy lump of rock that can do nothing but sink lower, and weigh down the world?  Who will roll away the stone that is me?  That is the Easter question, after all, and it is natural to find it on our lips, no matter what we think the stone is: whether it’s me or you, or the person sitting two rows back and three seats over, who you are pretty certain is more stony than you are.  Oh, who will roll away the stone?

After all, we know that the stones just keep getting rolled back, just when we think everything is good, and we can get on with life, we feel like someone rolls the stone back into place, and we have to start all over again.  Oh, who will roll away the stone?!?

And even though we have heard this story before, we so easily forget that we already know the answer.  Just when we think we are up against the greatest obstacle that the Resurrection ever faced, the greatest obstacle that Jesus ever faced.  Just when we think that Jesus could not possibly get past this stone on his side, and that we can not possible move it on our side…  we forget that we already know the answer to the question, who will roll away the stone?

The answer is this:  “When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back!”  The stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.

Yes, it’s true that there are stones that get in the way of Jesus, and that get in your way in your life; it’s true that there are obstacles to grace that work in at least two directions, and seem to be confounding the possibility of God’s love and salvation in the world.  Yes, it’s true that somehow those stones keep getting rolled back, dammit, and we would get where we are going so much quicker if that weren’t the case.  Yes, it’s true that you and I are often the greatest obstacles to Jesus’ resurrection in our own lives, and who knows whether we might be just as obstructive in the lives of others, I surely have been from time to time.  Oh, who will roll away the stone!?!

And when we look up, we see that the stone, which is very large, has already been rolled back!

(By now, it must surely be time for a chorus, and this preaching must come to an end!)

Look up, my friends, look up!  You have been looking down, as though you might stub your toe on this stone.  But the stone is very large – it is a serious obstacle, no doubt!  So look up, look up!  And see, the stone has already been rolled back, and although you and I hardly thought it possible, the Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Easter Day, 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Do not be afraid

Do not be afraid

Mother Takacs, Easter Vigil 2015.

A word cloud is a visual representation of a particular group of words. In its simplest form, a word cloud generator produces an image of the text in a relatively random distribution around the page – a couple of words here, a couple of words there, different colors, facing in different directions, tucked tightly into each other or shooting off into the margins. It’s, you know, words, in kinda the shape of a cloud. The point of word clouds is to show you which words matter – which words are used a lot, or which words carry more weight than others. It’s really quite simple – words that matter are just bigger. For example, Ellen Doster recently created a set of word clouds for our Family Mass Cards using the texts of the Ordinary of the Mass. They look like you would expect them to look: the word cloud for the Gloria is dominated by the words “God” and “Glory” and the word cloud for the Sanctus is basically just a big, giant “Holy” looming over the rest of the teeny tiny text. So you get the point – the big words are the words that matter.

So what would a word cloud look like for the Gospel text this evening? Funny you should ask that, because I just happened to create a couple to see what would happen. Most of them looked just the same, and how they looked was mostly unsurprising. Jesus was pretty big, and risen. So far, so good-and-Eastery. Said was also pretty big – no big shocker there. Behold was a bit of a surprise – most of the word cloud generators made that word enormous. It appears only twice in the Gospel, but I guess it is a kind of power word, a word that makes you sit up and take notice. But the biggest surprise by far was that there were two words that were much bigger than I would have expected – almost as big as Jesus – words that I did not expect to see blown up all over the face of this resurrection text. But there they were, right alongside Jesus and risen and behold: fear and afraid.

Surprising, perhaps, but entirely accurate. Because when you look carefully, you’ll see a resurrection text that is haunted from start to finish with references to fear. The two Marys arrive at the tomb in the shadowy pre-dawn hours. Suddenly, an earthquake, an angel appears like lightning, and the guards at the tomb are so terrified they pass out. The angel speaks to the still-conscious women, and the first thing he says, which is right out of the angel playbook, is: “Do not be afraid.” But the women are afraid anyway, and leave the tomb in joy, and in fear. They run to tell the disciples, but run up on Jesus instead, who tells them, again, “Do not be afraid.” Words about fear are everywhere; terror really is all around, popping up in every single scene of this short little Gospel reading.

And, if you think about, there is a lot to be afraid of here. The dark. Earthquakes. Lightning. Angels that rumble down from heaven and pop out at you from behind stone tombs. Enclosed spaces. Death. Throw in a handful of spiders and the number 13 and you’ve basically covered all of the major fear groups. And then, of course, there is the fear of change. There are some pretty intense changes going on here.  The women have gone to the tomb expecting to see Jesus very, very dead. Instead they hear that Jesus is actually very much alive. They hear that all of the things that he told them had actually been true. Here they are, a day and a half after the crucifixion, when they had just started to get used to the idea that maybe it was all over, that Jesus was really and truly gone and that they were going to have to try to squeeze their lives back into the little boxes they had known B.C. But now, now, they are sitting in front of an angel, who is telling them that everything has changed. For now is Christ risen from the dead. Their day, their whole lives, their whole world, is different, and that much difference, even when it is good news, can be just a bit scary.

This night, too, can be just a bit scary. We come here and sit in the dark, waiting, quiet. And then suddenly there is fire and smoke and prophecies about floods and dry bones, and then men being baptized into Christ’s death, and then this Gospel reading that is so full of fear. The lights are up now, the bells have rung, but those words can still loom large in our minds. Do not be afraid, the reminder comes, and we realize that if we are reminded of this again and again, year after year, perhaps it is because we really need to hear it. Perhaps we hear Do not be afraid again and again because heaven knows that we spend too much of our lives living in fear.

We live in fear of diagnoses and debt. We live in fear of loneliness and layoffs. We live in fear of addiction and Alzheimer’s, of drunken drivers and mentally ill pilots, of terrorism and MRSA and melting ice caps and the dissolving media. We are afraid of being in pain or without purpose. We live in fear of people who don’t look or sound or smell or think like us. We live in fear that the world might change, that our loved ones might change, that we might change. Terror is all around; no wonder it is so easy to get lost in the shadowy mess of anxiety and despair.

And when that word fear looms large in the cloud of our minds, it’s difficult to read anything else. When all we can see is fear, it’s difficult to see God and our neighbors and ourselves at all, let alone to love them. When all we can see is fear, we make bad choices and lose good friends. We eat badly and drink badly and behave badly. We listen badly and think badly. We find ourselves craving little amuse-bouche of gossip instead of hungering for knowledge that matters. We focus on self-protection instead of self-offering, on keeping them – whoever they are – out of our restaurants or off of our doorsteps, and we end up making bad laws and bad church policy. We worry and spend our time imagining the worst instead of imagining the coming of the kingdom of God. We hold tight to old resentments as if they were lifelines instead of ropes that bind our hands and hearts. We don’t do or love or choose anything right. And the worse we act, the worse it gets, because suddenly all of our fears seem actualized, if not in reality, then at least in the reality of our own heads. This is a hell of our own making, where terror is all around.

But this is why we come here tonight. This is why we sit here in the darkness together, waiting for light to burst forth and chase the shadows away. For tonight we remember, together, that fear is not the most important word in this story. Tonight we remind ourselves that Hell is vanquished, that we are free, that Christ has won for us the victory – over death, over the grave, and over fear. So do not be afraid. We may still feel fear, of course we will, but in the presence of this empty tomb we can see it for what it is – a liar and cheat. In the presence of the risen Christ we can see just how little this word really is. So do not be afraid. There is nothing that can harm you forever anymore. Do not be afraid. Christ is going ahead of you to all of the places where you are going, no matter what you might find there. Go on ahead and look for him. Do not be afraid. Behold, Jesus is risen!

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

4 April 2015 - the Great Vigil of Easter

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

A Beautiful Place

A Beautiful Place

Mother Erika

It had been a very beautiful place. Not beautiful like a green hill far away, as the old hymn says. It was a hill, but it wasn’t green at all and hadn’t been green for years. It was brown, mostly, but not just brown but a crazy patchwork of rust and shadow, all hazy and shimmering with dust. It wasn’t green, and it wasn’t far away from anything. It rubbed its rounded shoulder right up against the city wall; its wide foot nudged the bustling roadway that poured into one of the many city gates that gaped in the wall like mouths wide open. It wasn’t green; it wasn’t far away. It wasn’t idyllic. It wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t pastoral or peaceful or picturesque. It was a hill, like lots of little hills, but it had been beautiful.

It’d been beautiful because it had been, years so, a place of vital, and constant, activity. This hill had hummed, buzzed with busy men climbing up and down its paths with chisels and hammers and ropes. The face of the hill was in perpetual motion – day and night, men went up, stones came down, wave upon wave, and everything utterly awash with noise. The hill thundered with the boom of the mallet’s thump, with the deep crack of the rocks when the chisels found their way home, with the creak of ropes as stones were lifted and tied and dragged and dropped, and with the groans and sighs and laughs of men.

Masons, they had been, stonecutters, who had worked this hill their whole lives long. They had climbed this hill since they were old enough to swing a hammer, and cut it apart, piece by piece. They had cut and climbed for years, for generations, breaking out blocks of limestone that was as treasured as gold or as diamonds. For it was stone from this hill that had given shape to the very city it sat next to; stone from this hill that had formed the walls of Jerusalem, strengthened its gates and its passageways, maybe even grounded the very temple itself. And this stone had given shape to the lives of the men who worked to pry it out of the earth, who spent their youth and then their old age crawling over and into the sides of this hill, and to the women who worked at home and waited for their husbands’ return, work-weary and dusty but proud of their beautiful brown hill and its strong white stone.

But one day, one man threw the weight of his body into the final blow of his hammer and heard a sound that no one on that hill could remember ever hearing before. It was a dull thunk, and a shushing, as a wide crack crumbled open in front of him, right in the center of the hill. Pebbles and earth and flakes of rock sloughed off in sheets, and what was left behind, underneath all of that valuable limestone, meant that nothing would ever be the same on this hill again. For the hill had had a secret, hidden deep within its heart – a flaw, a fault line that no one had ever known was there. The men stood before this flaw for hours, it seemed, shaking their heads, scratching their rough chins, the younger ones making suggestions about how they might work around it, but the older ones knowing in their own hearts what this discovery really meant – that the hill was a ruin, that no rock would ever be quarried from it again, for no rock from this hill could ever again be trusted to bear the weight of the world. This hill, they knew, was done. It was finished.

And so the hill sat, abandoned, for years and years. Its paths, once so familiar and well-worn, quickly became choked with brush and dry weeds. The limestone which had once shined so clean and white in the sun was soon drowned in the dirt, and it, like the hill, soon was forgotten, as men traveled along other roads to other hills to quarry other stone. And the hill which had once been so beautiful because it had once been worth so much to so many, sat quiet and invisible, meaning nothing to no one.

Until one day, a single man stood on the Jerusalem road and looked up at this wreck of a hill and had an idea. Would not this place, as worthless and ugly as it was, be the perfect place for a dump? Not a dump for refuse – old baskets and broken pottery and stained cloth – but for the true trash of the earth – a place for dumping people, criminals, threats to the imperial power of Rome. Would not this place, as worthless and ugly as it was, be the perfect place for an execution?

And so the hill that had once been so valued and so beautiful became a place that struck fear in the hearts of men. Women rushed by it on their way into the city, eyes averted, looking at anything but those heights where men went to die terrible, agonizing deaths. Children dared each other to climb its slopes before bored soldiers or protective mothers could discover what they were up to. And week after week, some horrible procession made its way up its paths, now widened to accommodate their new travelers. Week after week, some prisoner was stabbed and prodded and kicked up the hill, while soldiers jabbed the latest wooden cross into place along one of the wide gashes in the stone. Week after week, some new torture, some new blood and tears, some new death. Week after week, the condemned went up, and the corpses came down. And the sides of the hill that had been carved out and put to use, giving new life to a wall or well somewhere, now looked empty and haunted, like vast eye sockets staring numbly at the city walls. Locals began to call it the place of the skull – perhaps because of its shocked, empty eyes or perhaps because of the hundreds of skulls that were beaten and bruised on its bloody slopes.

And all the while, that great seam of ruin, that fatal flaw ran down the center of the hill, mocking all who looked up at it. This place that used to give life now has nothing to offer but death. This place is broken and destroyed; it is full of weakness and fault, and there is no health left within it. It is a hill beyond hope, beyond redemption, always in shadow, always in night. The place of the skull, the place of evil and death, Golgatha.

One day, three more prisoners are prodded and kicked up the hill. And soldiers stab another cross into the crust of the earth. And one more man gasps and wheezes and bleeds. But this man, when he looks out from high atop the hill, sees not ugliness and pain and death, but beauty. He sees only beauty, only the devotion of the people who have followed him here, only the love of his mother and his cherished, beloved disciple. He sees only the thumbprint of God in the people who look up at him from the foot of his cross, even the soldiers whose fingers roll stones and gamble for his clothes right under his feet. He sees only grace here within the embrace of his outstretched arms, only holiness in this place that can bear so much pain. This man looks out upon this hill, upon these people, upon all of these fatal flaws running right down the middle and says no more. You are all forgiven. You are all redeemed. You are all so beautiful. After that, there was nothing to be said. The ugliness was done; it was all finished. So the man bowed his head and gave up his spirit. And the little hill and everyone on it felt the shift in the earth, the crack in the cosmos, as everything was changed.

Of course that little hill is now beautiful again. It is crowned with glory – covered with chapels and holy places and gold and diamonds. People have brought stone from other places to lay altars and tabernacles there; people come from all over the world to climb this little hill. And that is all well and good. But this hill didn’t become beautiful again because of engraved candlesticks and jeweled crosses; this hill became beautiful again because that of that great love, held high upon the cross. This hill became beautiful again because of that man who looked out upon the dust of that brown and broken place and said You are not forsaken. There is nothing so broken in you that I cannot fix. There is nothing so awful in you that I cannot love. There is nothing so dead in you that I cannot revive. There is nothing so sinful in you that I cannot redeem. There is nothing so ugly in you that I cannot admire. For your heart, your flawed, broken, sometimes dusty, sometimes lonely heart, is worth everything to me, for it is mine. And it is a beautiful place.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

3 April 2015 - Good Friday

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia