Who Will Roll Away the Stone?

A sermon for Easter Vigil, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God of each and every one of us, thank you for gathering us with one another. Make your presence known among us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

As I’ve thought about what I might say in this service, what I might proclaim after all these words have been read, one question has stuck in my mind: What if it was good?

What if it was good?

What if this big story of salvation, this never-ending relationship between God and humanity, this tale of separation and return, what if it was a good story? And what if it was true?

Because I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I really believed that the Christian story is good. It’s been a while since I could trust that it’s true. It’s so hard to believe that the Christian story is good and true because it’s been hard to see the evidence of it in the world around us. See, the Christian story, which we’ve heard so many beautiful voices read this evening, tells us that the world was made good. The Christian story tells us that our God is a saving God. The Christian story tells us that God will give us hearts of flesh instead of our hearts of stone, that God will breathe life back into that which was dead, even us. The Christian story tells us that nothing, nothing, nothing, not even death, can separate us from our God who is love.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve felt pretty separated from things lately. I’ve been separated from my family, my friends, my congregation. And if I know I can be separated from these things that I’ve seen, how can I believe that I won’t be separated from God, who I have not seen? What I’ve been faced with instead are death and hardened hearts and a creation in need of saving, a creation that couldn’t possibly be good. How can I believe that the Christian story is true when the world shows me time and again that it’s not?

And listen, we read a lot of bible tonight, but it’s not the entirety of the Bible, not by far. If the Christian story we read tonight can’t be true, because the world has shown us that it’s not true, then maybe the true Christian story isn’t good, either. Maybe God only gives love to some. Maybe we’re not good enough for God, and so God doesn’t care about us. Maybe God isn’t a saving God. Maybe God is a destroying God. Maybe God is a God of half-truths. God isn’t going to drown the world in water again, but maybe God means to drown us in sickness and despair and hopelessness, and start again after all the humans are gone.

Can’t say I blame God, either. When I listen to the news these days, I’m tempted to end us too.

Friends, it is so easy to despair in this time. It is so easy to be hopeless. It’s easy now and it was easy before COVID-19. It is hard to live in this world, where there is so much pain and death and destruction, where truth is hard to see and love is even harder to find. Everywhere you look, you find another reason to disbelieve the Christian story, another reason to doubt that things could ever be good again, if they ever were. New York City has a mass grave on Hart Island for the unclaimed dead who have died from coronavirus. It’s hard to believe the tomb is empty.

But.

But what if it was good?

What if the world was made good? What if the goodness of the earth and everything that lives on it was and is always springing up around us, never vanquished, even in the face of all the evil we’ve seen? What if it was good?

What if the story of God’s relationship with humanity was good? What if God never quit on us, was always seeking us, has always been seeking us, ever since we turned away? What if God loved us so much, God couldn’t stay away, and was born and lived and died as a human, and then rose again so that we could be reunited with God, no matter what else had happened in this world?

What if our hearts can change? What if we could be good?

What if our story, this Christian story, was good?

Well, I imagine that we might react the same way Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome did. Because goodness like that, goodness that is never-ending, never-failing, and life-changing, goodness like that is stunning. Goodness like that is terrifying. Goodness like that is too much to believe, too much to take in. Jesus, their last hope for goodness, was crucified on Friday. There was nothing left for them, nothing but disappointment and doubt. Everything they had longed for was gone. It was not in faithfulness they went to the tomb, but despair.

And now, the stone is rolled away. And now there’s someone inside, not Jesus, and he’s telling them that Jesus is risen. And now he’s telling them to go out and tell other people about this great goodness that has happened, this unbelievable goodness, this goodness that was impossible just seconds before. What responsibility. What possibility. What amazing goodness.

Mark’s gospel, in its original ending, ends with the women running away and telling no one what they had seen, unable to share what had happened, maybe because sharing it makes it real, and it’s so hard to believe that it’s real.

But they must have shared the news eventually. It must have gotten out somehow. Because here we all are. We know the story. And we have gathered together because we are working hard to believe that the story is real. The tomb is empty. Jesus is risen. And it is good.

God is good and God is love and nothing can separate us from God. Not sickness, not grief, not sadness, not despair, not joblessness, not loneliness, not fear, not doubt, not hopelessness, not worry, not panic, not uncertainty, not even death can separate us from our God who is love, our God who died and rose again. No matter what happens in this life, we are not alone. We are not abandoned. We are not lost or hated or ignored. We are loved with an everlasting love, a love that will not let us go. We are held in the arms of Jesus Christ our Savior. Praise God for this amazing goodness that has been given to us!

And this goodness, this great goodness, this is too much for us to keep to ourselves. God knows the world could use some goodness right now, and we can share it with them. We can offer hope that the world will not stay the way that it is, but will become something new. We can work so that the new creation God is bringing about will be more like promised reign of God, where we care for the hungry, the thirsty, those without protection, the stranger, those in prison, and those who are sick, where we seek out the lost and the least and call them family, where we care first for the poor and the oppressed. We can be instruments of the good God of love, who died and was raised and remains with us still.

God, may this good news of your resurrection fill us this night! Amen.