The Rev. Christopher Wendell, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Beside the sidewalk that runs in front of St. Paul’s Church three giant boulders are embedded in the earth. There is another, even larger one in the church basement. In fact, they are scattered all around Bedford. Scientists tell me that many of them are glacial erratics, which means they came from thousands of miles away during the last ice age when this part of New England was covered under giant sheets of ice. I find it nearly impossible to imagine that the streets in which we bike, the sidewalks on which we walk, and the homes in which we live were all once under so much ice. But they were. They may be again someday. It was these forces of flowing ice that were strong enough to move even the largest boulders in Bedford and deposit them where they now sit – in yards, in basements, or even beneath a church.
On that first Easter morning centuries ago, some women went to the tomb where they intended to wash Jesus’ body and prepare it for burial. Like many of us when we have a difficult task or even one we think may be impossible for us to accomplish, they worried aloud to each other about it. The particular object of their worry was the giant stone that covered the entrance to the tomb. As the last hours of night began to give way to the dawn, they asked one another “Who will roll away the stone?” It was a good question. Certainly, they would be unable to move such large boulders themselves. And there was no way they could accomplish their final act of compassion to the one they loved, unless they could figure out how to roll away the stone.
The stone in the Easter story is like a metaphor for the immoveable objects in our own lives. They are whatever keep us from being the fully compassionate, just, forgiving, and reconciling people that we yearn to be. It’s the stuff we keep trying to go around, or move through, or simply ignore, until we notice that…yup…it is still there. Sometimes they are internal obstacles – parts of our personality, our biology, or our upbringing – that keep holding us back. Sometimes they are external obstacles – like misogyny, economic oppression, or racial prejudice – that seem to be relentless. Whether they are internal, external, or some combination of the two, no matter how hard we push on them these immoveable objects seem to be forever separating us from the new life we desire and the transformed world we long for.
Whenever I get discouraged about the immoveable objects in my own life and in the life of the world, I sometimes go down to the church basement. I sit on the boulder down there and I think of the fact that at one point that rock was hundreds of miles away, probably up in Canada somewhere. I think of the women who arrived at the tomb to find that the stone they feared could never be moved had been rolled away. I think of how impossible the idea of Jesus’ rising to some kind of new life must have been to his first disciples. And I remember that there are forces in the universe that can move objects that seem immoveable, even if I can’t see them or don’t understand them.
For Christians, the Easter miracle is not just about God rolling away one stone two thousand years ago to reveal the promise of new life. It’s also about the ways God helps roll away our own stones today, inviting us into a transformed future, a deeper commitment to compassion, and an awakened heart. Easter is a promise that no matter how strong the forces of death may seem, the power of love will always ultimately overcome the love of power. It is a cause for great joy. And it is an empowering invitation to all people — that we too, whatever our beliefs about God, can be part of those mysterious and powerful forces of compassion, and justice, and reconciliation that can roll away the stones that loom so large for our sisters and brothers, whomever they may be.
Loading ...
