The Stone Synchronization
Pastor Mathew Magera – 4/21/19 – Sermon 345
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, from our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I am the child of my father and I’m also part of the
male species. I tend to easily miss objects that are directly in front of me
when I’m looking at them. Earlier this week I was reading an online article by
the New York Times that was published almost two years ago.[1]
At the beginning of the article was an image of a bathroom vanity, a mirror,
some cabinets, drawers and various items on the counter. Before I read the
article I was tasked with finding the toothbrush in the image and clicking on
it. I like these kinds of puzzles and I was quite proud of myself because I had
found it within seconds of looking at the image. Too easy. I clicked on the
toothbrush which happened to be right in the middle of the sink where anybody
could’ve found it. When I clicked on it, text appeared on screen congratulating
me on my find but asked if I had seen the second toothbrush in the photo. I
looked a little more intently at the photo and there it was, sprawled all the
way across the counter, a large dark blue toothbrush that would stand about
four feet tall if it weren’t laying down. I had completely missed it and fallen
for the trap set by the research study this article would be discussing.
The problem for this situation was scale. The
article said that people tend to “miss objects when their size is inconsistent
with their surroundings.” But, the study wasn’t just about scale. If we were to
go outside and be told to look for a mailbox, our brains would automatically
refine our observation to look for objects that fit the scale. We wouldn’t be
looking for ten foot tall mailboxes because they would be inconsistent to our
surroundings. Where this study really got to its point was when it found that
if we are not expecting to see something, we won’t pay attention to it. If we
don’t pay attention to it, we’ll likely never see it.
If I’ve learned anything about studying scripture it’s
that I have to always expect the unexpected. The reason I happened upon this
article this week was because I wanted to figure out why when I read the Easter
story, I had learned something so obvious I could not believe I had not caught
it before. It was this discovery I made during a devotion about a month or so
ago. My jaw nearly hit the floor. My first thought was, how had I not noticed
this before? My second thought was, this will most definitely be a part of my
Easter sermon this year.
That being said, I want to take you on the same
journey I went on so that you might hopefully discover something new within the
Easter story and how this discovery might deepen our faith in a loving God who
would risk so much to redeem each of us.
So picture it being that first Easter Sunday. As we
heard in John’s Gospel, it is early in the morning, so early, in fact, that the
sun hasn’t even thought about coming up yet. It was still dark. In all honesty,
it has been dark since Friday. Not physically dark, but it has been dark. It
has been dark with Peter’s denial of Jesus, three times for that matter. It has
been dark with the disciples’ turning their backs on Jesus when he was taken
away. It was dark with Pilate giving into the pressures from the crowd to send
Jesus for crucifixion. It was dark with the agonizing suffering that Jesus went
through from arrest to trial to the cross. It was certainly still dark with
Satan’s ear to ear grinning smile. The sun may have shone on that Sabbath
Saturday but it was certainly a dark day indeed.
It’s dark. It’s cold. The air is stale. Nothing but
silence to hear. That is until in the distance we hear something. It’s faint
but something has broken the stillness. It sounds like crunch, crunch, crunch.
What is it? The sound gets louder but you are still unable to see. Crunch,
crunch, crunch. As the sound gets closer, you realize what it is. It’s the
sound of feet walking down the gravel path. It’s Mary Magdalene. Within the
darkness comes this last ember of fading light in Mary as she makes an early
morning journey to the tomb of Jesus. As she passes you by you know why she is
going. Everything had happened so quickly on Friday. The Sabbath began on
Friday evening and in order to prepare for it, all the work had to be done as
quickly as possible to get Jesus down from the cross and into a tomb before sunset.
There was no time to clean the blood from his beard, to wipe the redness from
his legs, to close his eyes. It all happened so fast. The grieving process of
preparing a body for burial was skipped by, until Sunday morning. Mary had not
come on this journey to pray. She had not come on this journey with hope. She
had come on this journey to finish a job that had been stripped of her on
Friday evening. The last light in the darkness was about to be extinguished for
good.
No one else was with her, at least in John’s telling
of the story. In other accounts, other women had come with, also to finish the
job left undone on Friday. But the disciples weren’t there. They had given up.
It was as if they no longer knew him or cared for him. Why prepare for burial
the corpse of a man who you thought you knew but clearly didn’t? Their flames
had already gone out.
As we listen in the darkness to that crunch, crunch,
crunch of her feet on the path we notice the sound gets slower and slower and
slower until it’s stopped completely. Stillness once again. Deafening silence.
Then crunch, crunch, crunch again. Then faster, crunch, crunch, crunch. Then,
faster still. The sound passes you by going the other way getting faster and
faster. What happened? John 20 tells us as she was walking to the tomb she
noticed the stone had been rolled away from the entrance so she ran back to two
of the disciples. When these two came running past, they went into the tomb but
Jesus was nowhere to be found. He is risen!
You’ve heard the story now as I have heard it. But,
did you notice the four foot tall toothbrush hidden in the middle of all of
that? Listen to John 20 verse 1, “Early on the first day of the week, while it
was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been
removed from the entrance.” Did you notice it? The stone? Removed from the
entrance? I know what you’re thinking. Pastor, of course I noticed. The stone
was no longer covering the entrance of the tomb, it had been rolled away and
Jesus had already come out of the tomb. I may not be able to find the TV remote
on the coffee table when it’s right in front of me but yes I did notice the
stone had been removed from the entrance of the tomb. But, answer me this
question: Why was the stone removed? So Jesus could come out. Yes. That’s what
I thought too. Then the story began to unravel before my eyes.
Did the stone need to be removed from the entrance
so Jesus could get out? It’s what I’ve always assumed but never really
considered. Is Jesus powerful enough to conquer death yet on Easter Sunday
stood inside his own tomb knocking on the stone door hoping someone would hear
him and let him out? If so, I want to hear that story. It was probably a group
of teenagers out on a late Saturday night early Sunday morning. They thought
they were crazy when they heard him knocking from inside the tomb. No, that
didn’t happen. Later on Easter Sunday we hear of Jesus’ disciples in a room by
themselves in fear of the Jewish leaders coming to kill them for being Jesus’
followers. They were hiding away behind locked doors and Jesus appears in the
very room where they are cowering under the tables. There were no doors opened.
No windows. He came and stood among them, scripture says. He came right through
locked doors. If he can do this I seem to think walking through a stone door
across his tomb will present him with little challenge.
Jesus didn’t need the stone removed from the
entrance to get out. Nowhere in the Gospels does it ever say the stone was rolled
away so he could get out. John doesn’t say it. In John, as we read already, the
tomb was already open when Mary got there. There was no mention of how the
stone was removed and when the disciples went in Jesus wasn’t there. In Luke
24, women were going to the tomb and it says they found the stone already
rolled away when they got there. There was no mention of how it was removed and
when they went inside Jesus wasn’t there. In Mark 16, women were going to the
tomb and it says they found the stone already rolled away when they got there.
There was no mention of how it was removed and an angel at the entrance told
them Jesus wasn’t there. In Matthew 28, though, the story is different. In
Matthew 28, the women were going to the tomb and when they got there the stone
was covering the entrance until an angel came, rolled back the stone and sat on
it. Inviting them to look, the women saw that Jesus wasn’t there. He didn’t
just slip out unnoticed when the angel was removing the stone. Jesus was
already gone.
So, if Jesus didn’t need the stone removed from the
tomb in order to get out, why was the stone removed? If he was out already, why
is it so important that the stone be removed either before people arrived or by
an angel after they arrive? Why was the moving of the stone so essential to the
story? You know the song Jesus Loves Me when we sing, “Little ones to him
belong, they are weak but he is strong?” Jesus didn’t need the stone moved
away. He was strong. But, we needed it. The stone was rolled away not because
Jesus was weak but because we are. The stone was rolled away not so Jesus could
get out, but so that we could see in. On that dark day, when the last light was
about to go out, when hope was depleted and doubt was running rampant, God
remained faithful to those who were unfaithful.
If you think about it, this really is just God’s
steadfast character shining through at a moment like this. Think back to
Genesis when God told Abraham and Sarah they would have a child, even in their
old age. We track through this story for years and see nothing fruitful. At one
point they take matters into their own hands and get Abraham a son through one
of their slaves. But, that wasn’t God’s plan. Then God sends messengers to this
old couple and says when they return at that time in the next year, Abraham and
Sarah would have a son of their own. It’s at this point Sarah laughs. “I’m so
old I don’t even enjoy spending time with my husband anymore, and you expect me
to have a child by next year?” Abraham and Sarah had given up. The light was
gone. But God still prepared the surprise anyway.
Not long before Jesus was crucified did he raise
Lazarus from the dead. When Lazarus was sick, his sisters traveled to Jesus to
tell him to come and help. Jesus, instead, decided not to go. A few days later
he got word that Lazarus had died. Now, he would take his disciples and go.
They got there four days after Lazarus had been buried. His sister Martha told
Jesus, “if you had been here, Lazarus would not have died.” They had given up.
The light was gone. But God still prepared the surprise anyway.
Now, here we are on Easter Sunday. Mary is on her
way to the tomb but the hope is basically gone. The light was out. She was just
doing her duty. She had given up. But, God still prepared the surprise anyway. In
each of these stories God is doing something for us. He brought a child from a
barren womb. He gave life to a dead man. He opened a tomb where death had been
denied.
The stone had been removed from the entrance of the
tomb so we could see inside, so that we could see that though our lights go
out, though we are unfaithful, though we convicted, condemned, and crucified
our savior that God is still faithful. The moving of the stone synchronizes
with everything God has done to this point by reaching out and loving people
who don’t deserve his love.
The truth of this story is that we give up on God.
We give up on God quite often. When we give up on God, God moves stones. God
moves stones so he can welcome us into the saving work he is performing for us.
God moved the stone from the tomb to show us that Jesus was not there because
only the dead occupy tombs. Jesus was not dead. He was alive! God moved the
stone to show us that we do not seek a savior that is limp and cold, motionless
and unresponsive. God moved the stone to show us that while we are weak, he is
strong. God moved the stone from the tomb not for his benefit but for ours. God
moved the stone from the tomb for you so that you could see that Jesus is no
longer dead but alive and that your salvation has been secured in his death and
resurrection.
There was an experiment done in 2010 in which one
hundred dollars’ worth of singles were hung in a tree along an urban sidewalk.
Those conducting the experiment had intended to observe the behavior of people
passing by and how they would react. They wanted to see how many people would
take money from the tree and how many people would try to take as much money
from the tree as they could. What they found instead were two common responses.
The most common response to money in a tree was that people wouldn’t even
notice and would just walk on by. The second most common response was that
people would be standing around talking to people, looking right at the tree
and notice nothing different about it and eventually walk away. It’s a
phenomenon called inattentional blindness. Like me looking for a toothbrush on
a bathroom sink and missing one that was four feet long or like reading a story
we thought we knew only to discover something that was right in front of us,
this phenomenon can cause us to miss out on God trying to tell us something.
But, when we do notice something, not only do we feel the amazement that we
never saw it, but we feel better having noticed it and been fulfilled by it.
Easter is a story that continues to open itself to
us in new ways like the tomb being opened by the removal of the stone, inviting
us in to see its mysteries that are hidden right in front of us. It was a
mystery that amazed me enough that I wanted to share it with you, not just
because it makes a good story better, but because reminds me more and more how
God continues to remain faithful in a world where we are not always as faithful
as we think or want to be. Darkness may be clouding various corners of our life.
There may be parts of our world in which light is fading. My hope and prayer on
this Easter Sunday is that even in your darkness, even when you are losing
hope, even when you are about to give up on Jesus, prepare him for burial,
close his eyes and walk away that you would be ready for God to move the stone
and awaken you to joy in his love once more by discovering that Jesus is no
longer dead, but alive, that gone is your hopelessness, and renewed is your
light. He is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia! To God be the glory, now and
always. Amen.