Stones

Stones

For those of you that don’t know, my day-to-day occupation is an Education Mental Health practitioner. Basically that means that I offer low level CBT evidence based intervention to children aged 4-18 whose mental health challenges are stopping them from maximising their school experience. I have been doing it for 6 years and truly it is one of the honours of my life. Any intervention that I embark on with a young person will begin with an assessment, just to make sure that I have enough information to maximise the assistance offered in the intervention. Part of that assessment is called the RCAD assessment. The RCADS assessment is a questionnaire used to screen for anxiety and depression in children and teens aged 8 to 18. It helps identify symptoms related to various disorders like social anxiety, panic, OCD, and depression. Its 47 questions that can be answered in 4 categories (Never, Sometimes, Often, Always) but every single time I do it, one question stands out to me. ‘I think about death’.

Not ‘I think about dying’ or ‘I want to die’, the question is, ‘I think about death’. I always wonder how I would answer that question because the answer would be often and never. The never would come from the fact that I can’t seem to wrap my head around the concept and finality of it, and the often would be because when I do start thinking about it pragmatically, the traditions that we associate with it are very intriguing to me. One being the headstone. In the United Kingdom, it took until the 7th century for gravestones to become common practice, interestingly enough with the spread of Christianity. In ancient Jewish culture, graves were marked with stones for many reasons, but western Christianity adopted the practice for reasons of honour. Gravestones are an opportunity to remember who was held within them, and what they meant to those who had to say goodbye to them.  For people who did not know them to have the opportunity to pay their respects just from walking past. For practical reasons however, they were so people could find their loved ones once buried in a place that many others were also buried. Gravestones are final, and they signify that someone, at some point, has been buried here.

Bringing this cheery topic of conversation back to Easter Sunday, the question on your lips is probably why on earth I am talking about gravestones on today of all days. But there is method in the madness. You see when I think about Jesus’ death and resurrection, HIS gravestone is never far out of my mind. In case you are unfamiliar with the events leading up to resurrection Sunday, on Good Friday Jesus was crucified. After Jesus' death on the cross, His body was taken down from the cross by Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish council who secretly followed Jesus. Joseph, along with Nicodemus, another follower, carefully wrapped Jesus' body in linen cloths with spices, following Jewish burial customs of the time. They placed His body in a new tomb carved out of rock, which had never been used before, located in a garden near the site of His crucifixion. The tomb was then sealed with a large stone, Jesus’ gravestone if you will. This does not seem like particularly revolutionary information upon first glance, but when you step back and remember that in Jewish custom, almost nothing was done without intention, it’ll make you start to ask some questions about that stone.

On a surface level it was a symbol of finality, permanence, and authority. To seal a tomb with a stone was to declare something over. In Jesus’ burial, the massive stone rolled across the entrance represented more than just a physical barrier – it embodied the perceived end of hope. As we spoke about yesterday, for His followers, it must have felt like everything He had promised, every miracle they had witnessed, had been entombed with Him. Roman soldiers were even stationed to guard the tomb, fearing that Jesus’ disciples might steal His body and falsely claim that He had risen from the dead, further solidifying the perception that death had triumphed. Deeper still, In Jewish culture, stones also held spiritual weight. They were used in judgment – to condemn, to punish. To be crushed under stone was to be declared guilty. So, when Jesus, the sinless one, was placed behind the stone of a sealed tomb, it echoed the tension between divine justice and divine mercy. The stone acted like the seal of justice, as if the final verdict had been passed.

How many of us have experienced this, metaphorically. We’ve not only experienced the loss of what we thought would be ours, but we have buried it and rolled a stone across it that seems immovable. What have you buried? Is it your hope? Your peace? Your joy? Have you buried the idea that that loved one will ever come to know Jesus? Have you got prayers that you have buried? Think, what gave you rolled that stone across? What have you given up believing would ever have the breath of life ever again?

The stones we roll across things we believe to be dead speak to the finality and the triumph of death.  In the case of Jesus gravestone, we know how that story ends. Luke 24:1-2 says: ‘But very early on Sunday morning[a] the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance’. These ladies are remarkable. Their Messiah had just been brutally murdered. Their hope for the future had been sealed behind that stone along with him. But they did exactly what I am about to ask you to do. They went back to the place that their promise was buried. Even though they went believing that he was dead, they went to do the next thing they knew to do, only to find that the one they adored, was exactly who he said he was and did exactly what he said he was going to do. The rolling away of the stone shattered not only a physical barrier but a spiritual one. What had been a symbol of judgment and death became the announcement of life and redemption. The obstacle that once blocked the way now testified to the fact that there was no longer and would never again be a separation between God and humanity.

So, if you’re reading this, I believe this is for you. Go back to where your promise was buried, do the next thing you know to do. Go back to where your life and joy was buried. Pick up that promise you have put down, breathe life back into those prayers you do not pray anymore due to the heavy stone it feels like they are hidden behind. Because I can assure you, resurrection Sunday is evidence that There is no stone so heavy that cannot be rolled back by the resurrection power of Jesus Christ, no stony heart so heard that it can’t be softened by the miracle that is the 3rd day in the easter story. Go back to where you buried your hope and wait for him to roll the gravestone away.

He died for you, and he didn’t stay dead. He loved you so much that he could not. And instead of just saving your soul, his resurrection ensured that there would never be anything between you and him again, meaning that death has lost its finality, there’s no stone that he can’t roll. Go back and ask him.

Happy Easter.

We love you.

Agape x