|
Matthew 28:2 “One Single Stone” Easter Celebration Service A sermon by the Rev Roland Kubke April 4, 2010 An angel of the Lord came down from Heaven, and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.
If you’ve ever been to the driest part of the Prairies, it doesn’t take much to notice that things are very different there. In those parts, there are very, very few trees. There aren’t even many shrubs. In fact, for large stretches of hundreds of square kilometres, all there is to see is gently rolling swells with very short grass and wildflowers and lichens and the occasional cactus hiding close to the ground. It’s not even a solid carpet of plants. Look closely, and you will notice that the plants are spaced apart with nothing but crusted dirt between them. With a landscape like that, nothing much changes. What is there stays there. You can still see the ruts that the wheels of the Red River carts and the horse drawn wagons made on the original wagon trails long before there were things like gravel roads or pavement. You can even see the teepee rings of simple rocks that were just big enough for a native woman to carry. Those stones still sit on the surface of the ground looking like they have just been placed, even though for hundreds of years many of them have been lying where they have been set down. Indeed, the only way you can even tell that they have been there that long is because they have a crust of orange red lichens growing on top of them. In Saskatchewan and Alberta, on the part of the Prairies that we call the Palliser Triangle, even a single stone announces that someone was here long ago. One single stone, with its scratches or its etchings, or its placement on the ground, or any other sign of human touch, can announce that someone once needed that stone to mark the place where a person has lived! In our Easter Sunrise Gospel this morning, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were about to do one of those most difficult things imaginable. They would have had many worries as they hurried to the tomb. Would they have enough supplies to properly anoint the dead body of Jesus so they wouldn’t have to go back for more when the last thing in the world they wanted to do is take this trip a second time? Would their hearts break beyond anything they could stand when they saw the dead face of our Lord? Along with all those unspoken concerns came the most obvious one of all: would they even be able to get to the Lord’s body? What lay between them and the Lord was one single stone, but that one stone was a very great obstacle indeed. The great surprise of Easter is that the stone was already rolled away when they got there. Mark tells us in our Gospel lesson, “An angel of the Lord came down from Heaven, and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.” That one single stone had been rolled away because God Himself had seen to it. It had been rolled away to mark where Jesus had lived! Does that one single stone still mark the place for you where Jesus has lived? By God’s grace, it certainly does so, so that you, too, may share in the joys of Easter! |
Sermons
