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stone rollers

My sermon for this morning.

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No one remembered exactly what happened.

They knew the tomb was empty when those who came to anoint the body got there—but the list of exactly who went to the tomb with Mary Magdelene differs from gospel to gospel, though all four make it clear that it was the women who first learned that Jesus was resurrected.

The men—the ones who get called “the disciples”—had fled the scene of Jesus’ execution and had gone into hiding. The women were the ones who stayed until Jesus had died. And they were the ones who went to care for the body once the sabbath was over.

The Roman practice was not to take the bodies of the executed down from their crosses, but to leave them to decompose, both to even further humiliate the one who had been killed and their families, and also to serve as a warning to others. Intentional humiliation was part of the plan.

Jewish tradition said the body had to be buried before the sabbath began. It was an essential kindness. Joseph of Arimathea, who was a follower of Christ and also quite wealthy, had a tomb (actually one intended for him) and also had the influence, as a rich man, to negotiate with those bent on death and to see to it that Jesus’ body was taken down and cared for rather than being left to rot in public. Jesus was placed in the tomb just before sabbath began on what we would call Friday evening.

As we know, right about dawn on Sunday morning, the women went to the tomb to finish the anointing, which, in those days, was work only done by women. They were neither rich nor influential. Most of the graves to which they might have attended would have held more than one body and probably had some way to open the crypt. Jesus’ body was sealed in a tomb intended only for one, and for a wealthy one at that, so it would have been well secured.

When it comes to the stone, each gospel account tells of its removal a bit differently. Matthew says there was an earthquake that made it roll away, even frightening the security guard. Both Luke (which we read today) and John simply note that the stone was moved. Mark recounts that as the women were walking to the cemetery, they asked themselves, “Who will roll back the stone from the tomb for us?” because they knew it wasn’t something they could do themselves.

I know I was supposed to focus on Luke this week, but that question grabbed me as I read the gospels again: Who will roll back the stone from the tomb?

Whatever happened that turned the crucified Jesus into the risen Christ could not have happened unless someone had rolled away the stone. Resurrection requires a rolling stone—and I don’t mean Mick Jagger.

Resurrection requires stone rollers.

Which brings me to the other thing that struck me this week as I prepared.

Ginger’s church has a sunrise service at Jacobs Beach in Guilford every Easter Sunday. That’s right, I’ve already been to church—at 5:35 this morning! Since my guitar is more portable than the church organ, I was the accompaniment for the hymn we sang—the same one that will close our service—“Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”

As I practiced, the opening lines struck me differently than ever before:

Jesus Christ is risen today, alleluia!
our triumphant holy day, alleluia!

Particularly the second line—“our triumphant holy day”—I stopped practicing and said out loud, “One day? That’s all the triumph we get? No!”

The schnauzers were puzzled by my outburst, but it was a revelation for me that tied in with my musings about rolling stones. We are not singing this morning because of something that happened one time on one morning so long ago that we don’t even have exact details. We are singing this morning because stones have continued to be rolled away across millennia, giving us the chance to trust that every last one of us are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved.

I did something in that last paragraph I work hard not to do: I used the passive voice. I said, “We are singing this morning because stones have continued to be rolled away.” I abhor the passive voice because it puts distance between the action and the actor. Politicians use it all the time: “Mistakes were made; actions have been taken.” It drives me crazy.

When I realized what I had written, I started to go back and fix it, but I decided it would be better to correct myself in real time because I want to underline that rolling away the stones requires an active voice. Stones aren’t just rolled away. Someone has to roll them.

And so I invite us on this Easter morning as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, to think in the active voice (I think that’s possible) about what stones we need to roll away so God’s resurrecting power can continue to bring new life into the world for more than one triumphant day.

We are called to be stone rollers; we are called to be those who practice resurrection—those who look for ways to make room for life in the face of all that would kill us and in the face of all that takes life from those around us.

The phrase “practice resurrection” is the last line from a poem by Wendell Berry called “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” which describes what it means to be a stone roller. Listen to this excerpt:

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands. . .

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts. . . 

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Berry was by no means a perfect man, and he worked hard to deal in specifics when he talked about practicing resurrection. What, then, are we talking about when we say we need to roll the stones away?

(Bear with me here—I’m going to stretch the metaphor a bit.)

We might say some stones are small and can be rolled away with ease; we just have to take the time to do it. What I mean is not all stone rolling is the stuff of Easter morning in terms of impact.

Now I’ll mix my metaphors to make my point: I spent part of yesterday cleaning the beds around our hosta and peony plants who are just poking their heads up through the soil for this year’s round of resurrection. I rolled away the debris that could impede their growth. It was a small and essential act. I rolled some small stones.

What small stones can we roll—what small, intentional acts can we do—to create space for growth and connection, to create room for new life to break forth?

What words of apology or clarification do we need to say? What habits do we need to change? What patterns do we need to reevaluate? How willing are to examine our presuppositions, or to imagine that we still have a lot to learn? How quickly do we judge instead of asking questions when we don’t understand something?

Some stones are larger and require greater effort and intentionality—even risk—on our part, calling us to ask how we can create room for new life rather than dig holes for more graves. To be able to speak the truth to power we first have to speak the truth to ourselves.

How can we start a conversation with the person in our neighborhood who has a sign in their yard that we disagree with or even detest? How do we turn our anger into compassion? How can we bring ourselves to feel what it would be like if our family members were the ones being accused and deported without due process of law? How do we give up having to be right so that we can choose to be loving? We are all going to need help rolling that stone.

Some stones are giant boulders and require continued effort over generations. Will we play a part in rolling them even just a little, or will be slip into the passive voice and just hope that stones get rolled away without costing us too much? In the poem, Wendell Berry said we should plant sequoias. (Again, I’m mixing metaphors to make my point.)

As many times as I have said that love wins in the end and if love is not winning it’s not the end—and meant it as a statement of hope, I want you to hear me say this morning—on this Resurrection Morning—I am pretty sure love is not going to win in my lifetime. Any stone I try to roll is going to be some version of planting a sequoia.

In the wake of the Civil War Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” The next to the last verse says,

and in defeat I bowed my head
there is no peace on earth I said
for hate is strong and mocks the song
of peace on earth goodwill to all

He doesn’t end there, but that is the verse we are living in. We have followed Jesus from his birth to his death—a death that came about because he told people that God sided with the poor and those on the margins and those who were deemed to be of little value to society, other than to be the workforce.

So the powers that be executed him.

This morning, we have followed the women to the tomb to find that Christ is risen. If all that Easter means is that we have one triumphant holy day, then the power of the resurrection will last about as long as the forsythia bushes in the church yard. Luke says that those women and the frightened men they went to tell all went to their homes that night wondering what had happened.

They weren’t triumphant; they were bewildered. And so they kept gathering together and they kept telling the stories that mattered most and they rolled the stones of fear away from their hearts. Those are the stories we will read in the weeks to come.

Easter is about more than triumph, about more than a single victory; it is about more than one empty tomb. Jesus’ resurrection calls us to new life every day, to be stone rollers any time we see an opportunity, day after day with death all around us, planting sequoias we will not see grow large, offering invitations that cannot be reciprocated, taking care of people who cannot pay us back, clearing space for new life to grow and thrive, whether we’re talking about peonies or people.

Christ is risen today. Alleluia. And that only continues to matter if we keep rolling away the stones. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: choosing life

choosing life

when we moved to
Connecticut almost
a decade ago
I had an idea to plant
a tree each year

as a way to mark time
and to leave something
growing when we left
and so I planted two peach
trees over two summers

today I cut them down
not because they were dead
but because we also tell
time by schnauzers
and one who was not here

when I planted the trees
but has been here
when the meager harvests
fall to the ground faster
than we can pick them

and then after the fallen
fruit has rotted away
Loretta carries in the pits
as if they were prizes
to be treasured and

chewed to bits
and swallowed
which turns them into
life-threatening
schnauzer hazards

I chose one life
over two others just
as they were blooming
which gives me pause
as I await the resurrection

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: ice age

ice age

if you have to go out in
winter ice is not your friend
whether the white ridges
or the translucent layer

disguised as asphalt
ice will take you down
maybe that’s what they
had in mind when it

became the acronym for
those who knock down doors
and scour streets scraping
people into oblivion

it chills me to think that
evil appreciates metaphor
freezes me in my tracks to
watch the hail of hatred

break hearts and windows
and leave us all shivering
the arctic temperature of
such hate cannot sustain life

humanity loses its footing
in such frigid heartlessness
we need to burn things down
so we don’t all freeze to death

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: mirror image

mirror image

what is it about grief and loss that
makes life feel as if the clouded glass
through which we gaze carries the same
caution as the passenger-side mirror:
“objects may be closer than they appear”

the old songs sing of crossing rivers
and farther shores, of flying away
like a bird freed from prison bars but
life is so much more than a sentence
we are meant for more than an escape

as you travel, check your mirrors
get a sense of those fellow travelers
who have merely shifted dimensions
even if the view still feels clouded
we will understand it better by and by

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: living among the dead

living among the dead

one church member stood
during prayer time to mark
five years since his wife died

at coffee hour another said
next Sunday will be two years
since her husband died

when I checked email I saw
a request to help with a burial
of who died last night

and then at lunch Ginger
told me that my spiritual
director had died in her sleep

those are just the ones
I heard about today
no doubt there are more

not a day goes by that
isn’t attached to someone
who is no longer with us

as we are wont to say
even as we keep bumping
into their absences

and marking our calendars
so we can recognize
today’s particular ache

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: holy weak

holy weak

1.

Jesus rode into town
on a borrowed donkey
not wanting to be king.

we have a president who
thinks he’s a king and
is demanding a parade.

one is not like the other.

2.

to equate criticizing
Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza
with being antisemitic

is the same as saying
criticizing Trump for his actions
is being anti-American.

why are we scared to say so?

3.

the divider-in-chief says
Christians need to be protected
from those who choose their pronouns
even as he redefines words like
faith and freedom with impunity

If he had been in the crowd
around the woman when Jesus said,
“If you’re sinless, throw the first stone,”
I think he might have thrown his rock
and expected Jesus to be grateful

4.

contempt is not comfortable
(I’m talking to myself)

5.

I’m walking into Holy Week
assuming that I am going to die
in a country I don’t recognize

I wish I could ask the disciples
how in the world to get ready for
a resurrection you can’t see coming

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: rage room

rage room

I was in a different city
a few weeks back
and saw a rage room
a shop that invited you
to come in a break things

through the open door
we saw drop cloths and
a stack of sledgehammers
as well as sheets of glass
plates cups and televisions
stuff that would shatter

once you paid your money
you put on the coveralls
and safety googles
grabbed a hammer
and started swinging

as though destruction
had some larger purpose
or maybe it was just
to blow off some steam
either way the damage done
never left the building

which is the illusion
damage breeds damage
next time you’ll want to
put holes in the walls
or maybe take a swing
at the shopkeeper

when you’re holding
a sledgehammer
everything looks like
something to break

just ask the president
he breaks stuff everyday
like he owns the place
and rage is his right

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: remember this

remember this

this grab for power
is an act of desperation
it may seem measured
calculated deliberate
but look in their eyes
and you can see fear
behind all of the greed

the damage is real
but their frantic grasp
for permanence is not
nobody lasts forever
despot or democrat
history forgets us all
we grieve and we leave

we matter as matter
as parts of the whole
love handed down
from one age to the next
regardless of the whims
of the rich and fearful
power is not absolute

those who are diseased
are not contagious
those who climb thrones
have no lasting significance
tell them to their faces
better yet set your gaze
on those taking the blows

let their love infect you
the greed hate and whim
of deluded demagogues
don’t hold a candle to
our weathered tenacity
include yourself in that
we are all in this together

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: who counts

I preached about the prodigal son—well, mostly the older brother—today, a week late by the Lectionary Clock, but it felt like the right time to me.

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Though we didn’t go back and read the verses that begin Luke 15 when Bev read our scripture, I want to do that now to remind us of the context for Jesus telling the three parables about being lost and found:

Now the tax collectors and other wrongdoers came near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scholars were griping loudly, saying, “He welcomes wrongdoers and eats with them.”

Their comment was what precipitated Jesus’ parables.

As we looked at the first two—about the lost sheep and the lost coin—last week, I asked you to put yourself in the place of the finders—the shepherd and the woman—and think about who needed you to find them.

I kept thinking about them this week, even as I was working on what to say about the father and sons, and it struck me that what both the shepherd and the woman went through was not a one-time thing. The shepherd had to count his sheep every night to make sure they were all there. And, if the woman was anything like me, she probably left change in forgotten pockets on a regular basis. She had to count her change consistently as well in order to keep up with it.

But that is what they did. They kept counting and looking and finding because what mattered was to make things whole. They found joy—joy worthy of a party—in that sense of wholeness.

Theologian Amy-Jill Levine, who teaches here in Connecticut at the Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, is the one who set me thinking about all that. She writes,

“If the lost sheep and the lost coin are about the coming together of a group that had been separated and is now whole, perhaps that should be the model in which we understand (the parable of) the prodigal son.”

Once again, I am going to ask that we not move to quickly to assign roles to where we or God fit in this story—and by that I mean, let’s think beyond God being the waiting father and our being the petulant younger son. We all may have other roles to play.

It is not by accident that Jesus started a number of his parables by saying, “A certain man had two sons . . .” because it was a familiar way for Jewish people to think about stories of faith. Hebrew scripture has several of them: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Aaron and Moses. If we were to break down that list a bit we would realize that the biblical lesson appears to be, “It’s better to be the younger son.”

Well, Abel might beg to differ, but the pattern is there.

But the younger son in this parable is not particularly sympathetic. (And I’m not saying that because I’m an older brother.) I mean, look at him. He was rude to his dad in asking for his inheritance early, then he wasted it all without much thought and with a great deal of recklessness, and then he was kind of sketchy in the way he comes back after he had exhausted all his options, rather deviously strategizing about how to he can wiggle his way back into the house. He was not repentant any more than he thought he had to be.

And his dad didn’t care. He welcomed him home with the same joy the shepherd and the woman showed, throwing a big party because things were whole once more.

But there is one big difference between the father and the other two finders: the dad didn’t count. The shepherd knew he had a hundred sheep, and he counted every night to make sure they were all together. The woman counted her coins to keep up with her money because she was on a tight budget.

The father stood gazing down the road because he knew he had lost one son who had wandered away, but he didn’t count the one who stayed. Based on the way the eldest son reacted, we get the sense that his resentment at feeling uncounted ran far deeper than the situation than the afternoon of his brother’s return.

When the father went to ask why he wasn’t at the party, the eldest son exploded in rage and resentment. “This son of yours,” he said describing his brother, “did nothing but take advantage of you and you are throwing a party.” The son couldn’t see beyond himself and the anger he had allowed to fester because he felt uncounted—he couldn’t even say he had a brother. He was secure and had all he needed, yet he wasn’t satisfied or able to be joyful.

The father answered, “You live here and own everything. Come be joyful because ‘this brother of yours’ was lost and is found,” reminding his first born that he was not the only born.

Like the other two parables, the last word in the story is the invitation to “come share my joy.”

Except in this case, it isn’t really an ending, or even a resolution. When we try to use our sacred imagination to look beyond the last words, we can’t tell whether the family was ever made whole again; it depended on what the father and the oldest son did next. The father needed to learn to count—to remember even the ones that stay at home need to be found as well as fed.

The older brother had to decide if he was willing to make things whole again, which makes me think he’s really the one the story is about—or at least he’s the one on whom the heart of the story swings, because he was lost in plain sight and he was also the one who had to learn to be a finder if he, himself, was going to be found.

As are we, regardless of birth order. Levine says it this way:

“I am the older son. I don’t know what he will do. I don’t know what I will do. But the parable tells me what I should do because unless I make that move of reconciliation, there will be no wholeness, and if there’s no wholeness, there’s not peace.”

I would add to her words, if there’s no peace, there’s no joy to share.

The party is happening. The unflinching love and grace of God has invited everyone and is letting them all in as if they belong because they all do. That sounds like such good news until we think about what is required of us for everyone to belong. Even those people who don’t think everyone belongs are worth finding and bringing home. That’s a hard truth for me. I have to work hard to imagine that those who don’t think everyone is welcome are also welcome at the party.

We can’t say to God, “You need to do something about ‘that child of yours,’” before we will come to the party without expecting God to say, “You mean ‘that sibling of yours’?”

We are all wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. Every last one of us.

I’m not saying we just gloss over things. The oldest son reminds us what happens when we stuff away our feelings. There are plenty of hard conversations that need to be had. The family in the story would have all benefited from clear and current communication, from speaking the truth in love. They were fractured by years of things that had not been said or acted upon. That’s the point the father was making when he challenged his eldest about “that brother of yours.” He would not let his son act as though the other was not family.

Wholeness is hard work.

Still, the story ends in a bit of a mess as Jesus moved on to telling other parables about how we value one another, leaving things quite unresolved, much like many relationships in our lives, leaving us with this question:

What will we do to make things whole?

Regardless of who we are in the story, that is the question. The calling. Whether we feel like sheep or shepherds, losers or finders, desperate or content, fearful or hopeful, we are not alone, which is both a comfort and a challenge in this fractured and broken world we live in.

What will we do to make things whole? Amen.

Peace,

Milton

lenten journal: gathering

gathering

tomorrow two
groups will gather
on opposite ends
or our town green

the first will be
a funeral for a gentle
man who loved people
and their pets well

the second will be
a rally of solidarity
in the wake of all that
is being destroyed

in both cases
we will gather not
fully knowing why
other than it matters

the dead will not rise
our grief will not end
nothing will be solved
and we won’t be alone

none of the roads
we walk are new
death and dictators
seem as old as history

but rubbing shoulders
with other bits of stardust
who are also struggling
re-members us

puts us back together
which means to gather
after death after loss
in the middle of life

by midafternoon
we will disperse
as will those gathered
in other places

held by the fragile
grace of futility
of being together
we can’t change much

and we are not alone

Peace,
Milton