Easter: One Rock Cries Out

(This is not actually original. At least, not this year. I wrote it last year, on the day after Easter. It found its way onto my own writing web site and a few e-mails, things like that … But here I’m posting it for the wider audience.)The Rock that Cries Out

In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19, we see the account of Jesus making what we call His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, on the occasion that we now know as Palm Sunday. Riding on a donkey, He is making His way into Jerusalem and His fans are out in force. A massive crowd of followers showed up in front of Him throwing cloaks and palm branches on the road. At that time, some of the Pharisees called out to Jesus and told Him to tell His disciples to be quiet. Presumably, they needed their quiet for something vitally important. In verse 40, He tells them, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

This opens a week in which Jesus picks more than a few fights with the leaders of Jerusalem, throws the money-lenders out of the Temple, and is confronted time and again by the corrupt. I don’t know what it looks like when the rocks cry out the glory of God because no one else will. I have heard explanations that say this was just a response to the fact that all nature reveals God’s glory (a Romans 1:20 preview, I suppose). I don’t buy this explanation. Something happened on that Palm Sunday, and the earth itself knew it. This is one of those most-crucial moments in time, when Jesus made His return to Jerusalem for the week that would end in His death and resurrection.

At Jesus’ birth, the sky was rolled back so that angels themselves could announce it to shepherds. Apparently, the Triumphal Entry was a similar kind of situation. Salvation had been determined, and was going to happen. There was such power in this moment, I think that the rocks really would have burst out … whatever that means.

As I work my way through Luke, I move from wondering about this to the other end of the week. In Luke 24:2, the women found the stone rolled away from in front of Jesus’ tomb. Looking to Matthew for a bit more information, we see in Matthew 27:60 that Joseph of Arimathea put a large stone in front of Jesus’ tomb, shortly before the governor, Pontius Pilate, had the tomb sealed and guarded.

It struck me yesterday, during the Easter sermon, that that stone would have had a lot to say were it given the opportunity. This stone was supposed to be the symbol of Jesus’ final defeat and burial. It was supposed to stand as a permanent reminder to the disciples that they lost, that their faith was no match for the practicality of the Romans and the religious leaders of the day. Instead, everyone knows what it means that the stone was rolled away - even if the person doesn’t believe it.

If the stones along the road to Jerusalem had a lot to say about the coming of Jesus to the site of His final victory, this one - an integral part of that victory celebration - must have been something to see. It stands, no longer in front of the tomb, as a monument to God’s power over death, and thus as a symbol that everything Jesus said about resurrection, redemption, forgiveness, and love is true.

In many places through the Old Testament, it was traditional to set up small piles of rocks as memorials of what God did for the Israelites. Surely, one could make a case that this rock towers above them all. This rock was placed over a grave, and sealed at the order of Pilate by the priests of Jerusalem. Then it moved because God wanted it out of the way.

The thought crossed my mind … What would that stone cry out? If, for whatever reason, it was called on to praise God because not enough people were doing so, what would it have to say? This stone, after all, was witness to the validation of everything that Jesus Christ ever said and did. It was put in front of a grave that was emptied three days later, and where the women first met an angel who said that Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t there.

Ultimately, we don’t need the rock to cry out in any way. Its mere movement was a witness to the miracle that happened behind it.

For that miracle, we should never let it fall to the rocks to cry out.