What you can and can’t roll away.
Easter is just over our shoulders. The tomb is still fresh in the imagination, the pre-dawn silence, the women moving through the early morning light with spices in their hands, braced for grief and tears. They had come to do something. Something tender and necessary. Something that, as it turned out, had already been done.
“They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.” Luke 24:2.
No angels announced it. No rumbling thunder marked the moment. They simply arrived and the stone was gone. The resurrection had already happened – unhurried, unwitnessed, sovereign. God did not wait for mourners to show up before he raised his Son. The work was complete before anyone arrived to help.
The interesting thing about that stone was that nobody asked the women to move it. It wasn’t their job. Mark tells us they were asking each other on the road, “Who will roll away the stone for us?” – a practical, honest worry; one of the things you lay at night thinking over, and over, and over… And the answer, when they got there, was nobody needed to. It was already done.
That’s the message of resurrection grace. What literally only God can do, God does. The stone wasn’t a test of their faith. It wasn’t waiting on their effort. It was simply, decisively, moved. Angels, stand around grinning.
But now flip over to John 11. Lazarus. Big moment. Four days dead, tomb sealed, family overwhelmed with grief. Jesus shows up late – deliberately, and intentionally late – and says, “Take away the stone.” And they recoil in alarm. Martha, considers the implications; “Lord, by this time there will be an odour.” Jesus looks at her and effectively says, yes, I know. Take it away anyway.
What’s the difference? At the resurrection of Jesus, God rolled the stone. At the resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus told the people to roll it. Same Lord. Different instruction.
So what does that mean for us as we look on?
It’s clear, there are things only God can do. The new birth. Forgiveness. The raising of what is dead in you. You cannot manufacture those. You cannot earn your way to them or grieve hard enough to deserve them. They are done. Finished. Sovereign. You arrive and the stone is already gone.
But there are also stones Jesus asks you to move. Not to earn his miracle, but to participate in it. It’s worth thinking about them. The stone of avoidance you’ve kept between yourself and that person. The stone of silence you’ve rolled in front of a wound that needs exposure and prayer. The stone of self-protection that keeps what’s dead sealed away from the life Christ is speaking into it. And there are others that only you know about.
He is still saying it. Take away the stone.
Not so he can do what you should do, but so you can witness what only he can.
