An annual reminder
Commentary
Object:
In the opening verse of our passage from the epistles, the apostle Paul writes, "Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news...."
That might well also be the opening line of our sermons this Sunday. After all, it is Easter. The calendar compels us to return to the foundation and the heart of the gospel message. And the people who will fill our pews this Sunday -- some of them barely familiar to us since we last saw them on Christmas Eve -- already know what we're going to tell them.
I sometimes wonder at the challenge faced by the first generations of Christian evangelists: Paul and others who traveled the Mediterranean world with the good news when it was still news. In our day, however, though heaven knows that the folks in our culture don't really know much about the gospel, the people who come out this Sunday will at least already know that Jesus rose from the dead. Or that we believe he did. So our task, like Paul's in 1 Corinthians 15, is perhaps not to tell them something new, but to "remind (them) of the good news."
We must not minimize the importance of reminders. Human beings are so prone to forget things -- even important and familiar things -- that reminders are absolutely necessary.
I saw a friend of mine, while visiting a town from which he had moved 25 years earlier, unable to make the drive from the office where he had worked to the house where he had lived. It was a drive he had made virtually every day for ten years. Yet, with the passage of time, he had forgotten the once-familiar route.
In trying to help my daughter with her math homework, I find myself looking at problems and methods that are familiar from my own education. So much time has passed since then, and the material in which I used to earn "A" grades has been so little employed in intervening years, that I have mostly forgotten how to solve these arithmetic problems.
Favorite song lyrics, names of people who were once among our closest circle of friends, details of monumental days in our lives or our children's lives -- all these important and familiar things can slip away. And the things of God do not fare any better.
From the Israelites in the wilderness to the ye-of-little-faith disciples, we see in the pages of scripture how often God's people forget: forget what he has said, what he has done, what he is like. And forgetting such matters is always a costly business.
So we may enter our pulpits this Easter Sunday and unapologetically "remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news...."
Acts 10:34-43
We take some things so much for granted. Because a given thing has always been a part of our reality, we may find it hard to imagine a time without it. As I sit at my desk, for example, I am listening to a music CD. I remember well the days before CDs, to be sure, and my young daughters marvel at the musical oddities from my youth that they come across in the basement -- 8-trac tapes and record albums. Still, while I have witnessed the evolution from 8-tracs to iPods, I have never known a time without recorded music.
Whatever the medium, you and I probably have, for all our lives, taken for granted the phenomenon of recorded music. We have always been able to turn on some gadget and listen to the music of our choosing at the time of our choosing. Not only in our homes, but in our automobiles, on our bicycles, and wherever we care to go. In the big scheme of things, this is a relatively recent phenomenon. For the lion's share of human history, people could only listen to music either by attending a live performance or by making the music themselves. It may be hard for us even to imagine that earlier time and experience.
Likewise, in our day, when the Christian church spans the globe, it may be hard for us even to imagine the circumstances and mindset of Peter and Cornelius' day. I remember a poster that hung in one of the Sunday school rooms from my childhood. It featured a picture of the Earth with children representing virtually every racial and ethnic group holding hands around it. The caption featured something very much like the words to "Jesus Loves The Little Children."
You and I grew up with that kind of picture of the church and of God's love. Peter and Cornelius did not.
In the days of Acts 10, there is something genuinely scandalous about Peter's words: that "God shows no partiality," and that "anyone" from "every nation" can be "acceptable to him." While not inconsistent with many hints of God's global embrace found throughout the Old Testament, Peter's words were surely in conflict with the prevailing paradigm of the time. What about a chosen, covenant people? What about circumcision and the law? What about the theology embodied in the temple architecture, with its symbolic representation of people's proximity to God: the court of the priests being nearest, then Jewish men, then Jewish women, and then Gentiles as the farthest away?
The message that Peter proclaims to Cornelius and the rest of his Gentile household has sometimes been cited as a kind of embryonic gospel. For if we were to expand on each of the several events and themes to which Peter makes quick reference -- John the Baptist, Jesus going about "doing good and healing," "beginning in Galilee," followed by "all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem," including how the leaders "put him to death" and how "God raised him on the third day," followed by a record of those "who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead" -- we would have something very much like Matthew, Mark, or Luke. So it seems that the writing of the gospels was a natural outgrowth of the preaching of the gospel.
Peter includes himself among those "who were chosen by God as witnesses." It is notable that being a witness is not portrayed here as a voluntary thing. An individual does not sign up for the privilege; he or she is selected for it. The point is reinforced by Peter's statement that "he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify...." Peter and his companions are not mere volunteers; they have been called to the witness stand by God himself.
And that, in turn, reminds us that bearing witness is actually a secondary act. A person cannot witness until he has witnessed. I must experience something before I can bear witness to that something. There is no purpose in my climbing onto the witness stand unless I have first experienced something that is relevant to the case.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Twice in this passage, Paul uses the phrase "in accordance with the scriptures." In the first case, it is a reference to Christ's crucifixion; and in the second case, it is a reference to his resurrection. "The scriptures" for Paul, of course, were the writings that comprise our Old Testament. Ironically, the lectionary does not furnish us with any such Old Testament readings for this Sunday.
The significance of the phrase -- "in accordance with the scriptures" -- is threefold. At times, the biblical writers will make such a reference as a kind of argument from authority. The person and work of Christ are verified by the degree to which they fulfill the predictions and foreshadows of the scriptures. The way that Matthew cites the scriptures being "fulfilled" is a good example of this usage.
At other times, biblical writers will make such a reference as a teaching device. The person and work of Christ are explained in light of the scriptures that prefigured him. The letter to the Hebrews is a notable example.
And then, at other times, the biblical writers will make such a reference as a way of showing that God calls his shots. Like Babe Ruth's legendary gesture toward the wall in the 1932 World Series, time and again God tells what he is going to do before he does it. This is an especially crucial element in the Old Testament prophets: let there be no mistake, when these things happen, that they were God's doing.
Paul affirms that both Christ's dying and rising were "in accordance with the scriptures." It is a truth echoed in the other two lections for this Sunday, as well. Peter assures Cornelius that "all the prophets testify about him," and the young man in the otherwise empty tomb explains to the startled women that they will see Jesus in Galilee, "just as he told you."
The irony of our lections this week is that this prominent theme of "in accordance with the scriptures" is unaccompanied by any of those scriptures. We have three New Testament passages this week; we should perhaps do our people the favor, however, of sharing with them some of the Old Testament texts in which God called his Good Friday and Easter Sunday shots.
As Paul recounts the resurrection of Jesus, he makes a careful point of Jesus' post-resurrection. This theme is paralleled in Peter's speech to Cornelius' household. Paul identifies himself as the "last of all." Our idiomatic phrase says "last, but not least." Paul, however, reckons himself both last and least of the apostles. He knows that he is "unfit." Of course, that is always the testimony in the wake of God's grace.
Toward the end of this passage, Paul makes a statement that raises a sobering question. He makes the confident claim that God's "grace toward me has not been in vain." Are we able to make the same statement with the same confidence? To what extent has the investment of his grace enjoyed a good return in me or to what extent has his grace toward me been in vain -- like the seed that fell upon the path or like the talent entrusted to the third servant?
"In vain" is something of a recurring concern for Paul. Perhaps it is a concern born of his natural pragmatism, or his competitiveness, or whatever regret he lived with for his pre-Damascus living. In any case, he uses the phrase twelve different times in his letters, including five times in this chapter alone. The people's believing (15:2), their faith (15:14), and the apostles' proclamation (15:14) could all possibly be in vain. At the same time, he assures the people that God's grace (15:10) and their labor (15:58) have not been in vain.
Mark 16:1-8
One of my New Testament professors once shared what he thought was the single greatest evidence of the resurrection. "Women were the first witnesses," he said. "If the early Christians were making up the story of Jesus rising from the dead, they would have used different witnesses in order to give the story greater credibility in that first-century world."
Likewise, at the end of this passage, Mark includes a detail that adds to my professor's method of verification. The women, according to Mark, were seized by "terror and amazement; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Again, if you were making up this story, you wouldn't do it this way. It is the blemishes that make the photograph believable.
As a man, it's hard not to be embarrassed by the absentee disciples in this most important of events. It seems that they scattered from the Garden of Gethsemane on Thursday night, and they had been mostly laying low ever since. It was these marvelous women, comparatively fearless and moved by their love, who were headed to the tomb at the first opportunity in order to care for their Lord, even in his death.
Perhaps there is a great truth here. The despairing, the fearful, and the self-absorbed are in hiding and consequently they miss out on God's great work. It is those who boldly step out in love, if not in faith or understanding, who witness and share in what God is doing.
Mark adds a marvelously human touch to his Easter narrative. As he describes the women coming to the tomb, recites their wondering about the stone, and reports that it had already been rolled away, he inserts this descriptive phrase about the stone: "which was very large." It is a charming detail to include, as though the stone was the greatest obstacle to be overcome on Easter Sunday.
When the women arrive at the tomb, they are surprised to discover that the stone, which had covered the entrance, had already been rolled away. Naturally, they took the opportunity to step inside the tomb. After all, they had come for the purpose of anointing Jesus' body with spices. They are astonished -- alarmed -- by what they find. Rather than the dead body of their Lord lying where it had been placed, they find a man, who is very much alive, sitting there instead.
The scene would be humorous if it were not so initially horrifying. The analogy is imperfect but imagine several grieving women arriving at a funeral home for the visitation. They walk over to the open casket, expecting to weep over the corpse of their loved one, only to discover that he's not there at all. Ah, but it's not that the casket is altogether empty. No, someone else is there, sitting up, alive, and apparently waiting to talk to them.
The "young man, dressed in a white robe" seems to be a kind of holy forwarding address. It turns out that the one they had come looking for was no longer there. He had moved on. This helpful young man waiting there was evidently waiting for precisely such visitors so that he could send them on to Galilee, where "he is going ahead of you" and where "you will see him, just as he told you."
The four gospels have slight variations in their accounts of Easter Sunday, including who sees the risen Christ, when and where, but there is this consistency: no one sees him in the tomb. Once he is raised, he is no longer there. Mark and Luke have men in white waiting inside the tomb with the news of Jesus' resurrection, but it is not Jesus himself who waits inside the tomb. Indeed, Matthew's account seems to indicate that he was gone even before the stone was rolled away (28:1-6). He can be found by those who seek him, to be sure, but not there. He's not in the tomb.
Application
I mentioned earlier a friend who forgot what had once been a familiar route, just as I have forgotten how to do certain mathematics. The result for my friend, of course, is that he got lost. The result for me is that I cannot solve the problems in my daughter's math book.
Perhaps we might consider, with our people, what variety of things we human beings forget -- including some things we thought we would never forget! Next, we might consider the instances in scripture where God's people seemed to forget what he had said or done, identifying the consequences of their forgetfulness.
Then we might turn our attention to Easter. Is it possible that we could forget that? And, if so, what are the consequences?
My friend getting lost in what used to be his hometown proved that he had forgotten his way around. Perhaps, likewise, our occasional hopelessness, gloom, despair, joylessness, or sense of defeat indicates that we have forgotten: forgotten the unparalleled, unmitigated, come-from-behind, once-and-for-all victory of our Lord.
That victory changes everything. It changes our death, and consequently it also changes our life. It changes how we mourn, how we hope, how we endure, and how we live. So, it may be essential this Sunday to remind our brothers and sisters of the good news.
Meanwhile, the other part of the purpose of the reminder is the purpose of propagation.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians that "I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received." The language suggests a relay race, and the baton is the gospel. It was handed to him, and he carefully and urgently handed it on to the Corinthians.
Of course, it is not meant to stop there. The baton should not end with any one person until the race has been won. Rather, "he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one...."
With care and urgency, then, we hand the gospel baton to our people this Sunday. We urge and remind them, in turn, to pass the good news along.
An Alternative Application
Mark 16:1-8. "The Very Large Stone." The stone, "which was very large," serves as a very useful metaphor for us. The women approached the tomb with apprehension about that stone. Who would move it for them? They were certainly unable to move it themselves.
Likewise, as the stone symbolizes the seal of death, we human beings indeed face something too massive for us to move ourselves. We continually invest the full strength of our technology and our own best efforts as individuals; yet we can barely budge that stone. Our little centimeters of achievement in this direction do not remotely change the immense reality: namely, death is too big for us. We cannot escape it; we cannot conquer it; we cannot buy or learn or medicate our way out of it; and we cannot remove its seal from friends, loved ones, or ourselves.
Then comes the good news of Easter. The women arrive at the tomb and discover that the stone "had already been rolled back." What they could not do for themselves, God had already done for them, and in the same event, God also did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. So we will find, when we arrive at our tomb, that the great seal of death has already been rolled away for us too.
That might well also be the opening line of our sermons this Sunday. After all, it is Easter. The calendar compels us to return to the foundation and the heart of the gospel message. And the people who will fill our pews this Sunday -- some of them barely familiar to us since we last saw them on Christmas Eve -- already know what we're going to tell them.
I sometimes wonder at the challenge faced by the first generations of Christian evangelists: Paul and others who traveled the Mediterranean world with the good news when it was still news. In our day, however, though heaven knows that the folks in our culture don't really know much about the gospel, the people who come out this Sunday will at least already know that Jesus rose from the dead. Or that we believe he did. So our task, like Paul's in 1 Corinthians 15, is perhaps not to tell them something new, but to "remind (them) of the good news."
We must not minimize the importance of reminders. Human beings are so prone to forget things -- even important and familiar things -- that reminders are absolutely necessary.
I saw a friend of mine, while visiting a town from which he had moved 25 years earlier, unable to make the drive from the office where he had worked to the house where he had lived. It was a drive he had made virtually every day for ten years. Yet, with the passage of time, he had forgotten the once-familiar route.
In trying to help my daughter with her math homework, I find myself looking at problems and methods that are familiar from my own education. So much time has passed since then, and the material in which I used to earn "A" grades has been so little employed in intervening years, that I have mostly forgotten how to solve these arithmetic problems.
Favorite song lyrics, names of people who were once among our closest circle of friends, details of monumental days in our lives or our children's lives -- all these important and familiar things can slip away. And the things of God do not fare any better.
From the Israelites in the wilderness to the ye-of-little-faith disciples, we see in the pages of scripture how often God's people forget: forget what he has said, what he has done, what he is like. And forgetting such matters is always a costly business.
So we may enter our pulpits this Easter Sunday and unapologetically "remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news...."
Acts 10:34-43
We take some things so much for granted. Because a given thing has always been a part of our reality, we may find it hard to imagine a time without it. As I sit at my desk, for example, I am listening to a music CD. I remember well the days before CDs, to be sure, and my young daughters marvel at the musical oddities from my youth that they come across in the basement -- 8-trac tapes and record albums. Still, while I have witnessed the evolution from 8-tracs to iPods, I have never known a time without recorded music.
Whatever the medium, you and I probably have, for all our lives, taken for granted the phenomenon of recorded music. We have always been able to turn on some gadget and listen to the music of our choosing at the time of our choosing. Not only in our homes, but in our automobiles, on our bicycles, and wherever we care to go. In the big scheme of things, this is a relatively recent phenomenon. For the lion's share of human history, people could only listen to music either by attending a live performance or by making the music themselves. It may be hard for us even to imagine that earlier time and experience.
Likewise, in our day, when the Christian church spans the globe, it may be hard for us even to imagine the circumstances and mindset of Peter and Cornelius' day. I remember a poster that hung in one of the Sunday school rooms from my childhood. It featured a picture of the Earth with children representing virtually every racial and ethnic group holding hands around it. The caption featured something very much like the words to "Jesus Loves The Little Children."
You and I grew up with that kind of picture of the church and of God's love. Peter and Cornelius did not.
In the days of Acts 10, there is something genuinely scandalous about Peter's words: that "God shows no partiality," and that "anyone" from "every nation" can be "acceptable to him." While not inconsistent with many hints of God's global embrace found throughout the Old Testament, Peter's words were surely in conflict with the prevailing paradigm of the time. What about a chosen, covenant people? What about circumcision and the law? What about the theology embodied in the temple architecture, with its symbolic representation of people's proximity to God: the court of the priests being nearest, then Jewish men, then Jewish women, and then Gentiles as the farthest away?
The message that Peter proclaims to Cornelius and the rest of his Gentile household has sometimes been cited as a kind of embryonic gospel. For if we were to expand on each of the several events and themes to which Peter makes quick reference -- John the Baptist, Jesus going about "doing good and healing," "beginning in Galilee," followed by "all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem," including how the leaders "put him to death" and how "God raised him on the third day," followed by a record of those "who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead" -- we would have something very much like Matthew, Mark, or Luke. So it seems that the writing of the gospels was a natural outgrowth of the preaching of the gospel.
Peter includes himself among those "who were chosen by God as witnesses." It is notable that being a witness is not portrayed here as a voluntary thing. An individual does not sign up for the privilege; he or she is selected for it. The point is reinforced by Peter's statement that "he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify...." Peter and his companions are not mere volunteers; they have been called to the witness stand by God himself.
And that, in turn, reminds us that bearing witness is actually a secondary act. A person cannot witness until he has witnessed. I must experience something before I can bear witness to that something. There is no purpose in my climbing onto the witness stand unless I have first experienced something that is relevant to the case.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Twice in this passage, Paul uses the phrase "in accordance with the scriptures." In the first case, it is a reference to Christ's crucifixion; and in the second case, it is a reference to his resurrection. "The scriptures" for Paul, of course, were the writings that comprise our Old Testament. Ironically, the lectionary does not furnish us with any such Old Testament readings for this Sunday.
The significance of the phrase -- "in accordance with the scriptures" -- is threefold. At times, the biblical writers will make such a reference as a kind of argument from authority. The person and work of Christ are verified by the degree to which they fulfill the predictions and foreshadows of the scriptures. The way that Matthew cites the scriptures being "fulfilled" is a good example of this usage.
At other times, biblical writers will make such a reference as a teaching device. The person and work of Christ are explained in light of the scriptures that prefigured him. The letter to the Hebrews is a notable example.
And then, at other times, the biblical writers will make such a reference as a way of showing that God calls his shots. Like Babe Ruth's legendary gesture toward the wall in the 1932 World Series, time and again God tells what he is going to do before he does it. This is an especially crucial element in the Old Testament prophets: let there be no mistake, when these things happen, that they were God's doing.
Paul affirms that both Christ's dying and rising were "in accordance with the scriptures." It is a truth echoed in the other two lections for this Sunday, as well. Peter assures Cornelius that "all the prophets testify about him," and the young man in the otherwise empty tomb explains to the startled women that they will see Jesus in Galilee, "just as he told you."
The irony of our lections this week is that this prominent theme of "in accordance with the scriptures" is unaccompanied by any of those scriptures. We have three New Testament passages this week; we should perhaps do our people the favor, however, of sharing with them some of the Old Testament texts in which God called his Good Friday and Easter Sunday shots.
As Paul recounts the resurrection of Jesus, he makes a careful point of Jesus' post-resurrection. This theme is paralleled in Peter's speech to Cornelius' household. Paul identifies himself as the "last of all." Our idiomatic phrase says "last, but not least." Paul, however, reckons himself both last and least of the apostles. He knows that he is "unfit." Of course, that is always the testimony in the wake of God's grace.
Toward the end of this passage, Paul makes a statement that raises a sobering question. He makes the confident claim that God's "grace toward me has not been in vain." Are we able to make the same statement with the same confidence? To what extent has the investment of his grace enjoyed a good return in me or to what extent has his grace toward me been in vain -- like the seed that fell upon the path or like the talent entrusted to the third servant?
"In vain" is something of a recurring concern for Paul. Perhaps it is a concern born of his natural pragmatism, or his competitiveness, or whatever regret he lived with for his pre-Damascus living. In any case, he uses the phrase twelve different times in his letters, including five times in this chapter alone. The people's believing (15:2), their faith (15:14), and the apostles' proclamation (15:14) could all possibly be in vain. At the same time, he assures the people that God's grace (15:10) and their labor (15:58) have not been in vain.
Mark 16:1-8
One of my New Testament professors once shared what he thought was the single greatest evidence of the resurrection. "Women were the first witnesses," he said. "If the early Christians were making up the story of Jesus rising from the dead, they would have used different witnesses in order to give the story greater credibility in that first-century world."
Likewise, at the end of this passage, Mark includes a detail that adds to my professor's method of verification. The women, according to Mark, were seized by "terror and amazement; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Again, if you were making up this story, you wouldn't do it this way. It is the blemishes that make the photograph believable.
As a man, it's hard not to be embarrassed by the absentee disciples in this most important of events. It seems that they scattered from the Garden of Gethsemane on Thursday night, and they had been mostly laying low ever since. It was these marvelous women, comparatively fearless and moved by their love, who were headed to the tomb at the first opportunity in order to care for their Lord, even in his death.
Perhaps there is a great truth here. The despairing, the fearful, and the self-absorbed are in hiding and consequently they miss out on God's great work. It is those who boldly step out in love, if not in faith or understanding, who witness and share in what God is doing.
Mark adds a marvelously human touch to his Easter narrative. As he describes the women coming to the tomb, recites their wondering about the stone, and reports that it had already been rolled away, he inserts this descriptive phrase about the stone: "which was very large." It is a charming detail to include, as though the stone was the greatest obstacle to be overcome on Easter Sunday.
When the women arrive at the tomb, they are surprised to discover that the stone, which had covered the entrance, had already been rolled away. Naturally, they took the opportunity to step inside the tomb. After all, they had come for the purpose of anointing Jesus' body with spices. They are astonished -- alarmed -- by what they find. Rather than the dead body of their Lord lying where it had been placed, they find a man, who is very much alive, sitting there instead.
The scene would be humorous if it were not so initially horrifying. The analogy is imperfect but imagine several grieving women arriving at a funeral home for the visitation. They walk over to the open casket, expecting to weep over the corpse of their loved one, only to discover that he's not there at all. Ah, but it's not that the casket is altogether empty. No, someone else is there, sitting up, alive, and apparently waiting to talk to them.
The "young man, dressed in a white robe" seems to be a kind of holy forwarding address. It turns out that the one they had come looking for was no longer there. He had moved on. This helpful young man waiting there was evidently waiting for precisely such visitors so that he could send them on to Galilee, where "he is going ahead of you" and where "you will see him, just as he told you."
The four gospels have slight variations in their accounts of Easter Sunday, including who sees the risen Christ, when and where, but there is this consistency: no one sees him in the tomb. Once he is raised, he is no longer there. Mark and Luke have men in white waiting inside the tomb with the news of Jesus' resurrection, but it is not Jesus himself who waits inside the tomb. Indeed, Matthew's account seems to indicate that he was gone even before the stone was rolled away (28:1-6). He can be found by those who seek him, to be sure, but not there. He's not in the tomb.
Application
I mentioned earlier a friend who forgot what had once been a familiar route, just as I have forgotten how to do certain mathematics. The result for my friend, of course, is that he got lost. The result for me is that I cannot solve the problems in my daughter's math book.
Perhaps we might consider, with our people, what variety of things we human beings forget -- including some things we thought we would never forget! Next, we might consider the instances in scripture where God's people seemed to forget what he had said or done, identifying the consequences of their forgetfulness.
Then we might turn our attention to Easter. Is it possible that we could forget that? And, if so, what are the consequences?
My friend getting lost in what used to be his hometown proved that he had forgotten his way around. Perhaps, likewise, our occasional hopelessness, gloom, despair, joylessness, or sense of defeat indicates that we have forgotten: forgotten the unparalleled, unmitigated, come-from-behind, once-and-for-all victory of our Lord.
That victory changes everything. It changes our death, and consequently it also changes our life. It changes how we mourn, how we hope, how we endure, and how we live. So, it may be essential this Sunday to remind our brothers and sisters of the good news.
Meanwhile, the other part of the purpose of the reminder is the purpose of propagation.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians that "I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received." The language suggests a relay race, and the baton is the gospel. It was handed to him, and he carefully and urgently handed it on to the Corinthians.
Of course, it is not meant to stop there. The baton should not end with any one person until the race has been won. Rather, "he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one...."
With care and urgency, then, we hand the gospel baton to our people this Sunday. We urge and remind them, in turn, to pass the good news along.
An Alternative Application
Mark 16:1-8. "The Very Large Stone." The stone, "which was very large," serves as a very useful metaphor for us. The women approached the tomb with apprehension about that stone. Who would move it for them? They were certainly unable to move it themselves.
Likewise, as the stone symbolizes the seal of death, we human beings indeed face something too massive for us to move ourselves. We continually invest the full strength of our technology and our own best efforts as individuals; yet we can barely budge that stone. Our little centimeters of achievement in this direction do not remotely change the immense reality: namely, death is too big for us. We cannot escape it; we cannot conquer it; we cannot buy or learn or medicate our way out of it; and we cannot remove its seal from friends, loved ones, or ourselves.
Then comes the good news of Easter. The women arrive at the tomb and discover that the stone "had already been rolled back." What they could not do for themselves, God had already done for them, and in the same event, God also did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. So we will find, when we arrive at our tomb, that the great seal of death has already been rolled away for us too.
