Who Will Roll Away the Stone for Us?

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024

Pastor Karen Crawford

**Art by Stushie, used with permission**

In January, 1997, the French Coast Guard transmitted its final message in Morse Code:

“Calling all, this is our last cry before eternal silence.” [1]

“Ships in distress had radioed out dits and dahs from the era of the (ship) Titanic to the era of the movie Titanic. In near instant time, the beeps could be deciphered by Morse-code stations thousands of miles away. First used to send messages over land in 1844, Morse code outlived the telegraph age by becoming (the language) of the sea. But by the late 20^th century, satellite radio was turning it into a dying language. In February 1999, it officially ceased being the standard for maritime communications.” [2]

April’s Atlantic Magazine tells the story of the last operational Morse-code radio station in North America, nestled within the Point Reyes National Seashore, north of San Francisco. The station—which is actually two buildings some 25 miles apart—”once watched over the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.” [3] Both sites shut down in 1997, but a few years later, “a couple of radio enthusiasts brought them back to life. The crew has gotten slightly larger over the years. Its members call themselves ‘radio squirrels.’” [4] They get together every Saturday and “beep out maritime news and weather reports and receive any stray messages. Most of the time, they are communicating with a WWII-era ship permanently parked at the San Francisco pier.” [5] Some of the machines they use date back to WWII.

“To send a message, they (tap) each Morse-code letter into a gadget called a ‘bug,’ generating a loud, staticky noise that reverberates throughout the whole building. ‘It’s almost like jazz,’ one of the radio squirrels said, ‘a music of rhythm and timing that can sound different depending on who is doing the tapping.” [6] Volunteers start each Saturday morning “with ‘services’ for ‘The Church of Continuous Wave.’” [7] They share a meal on vintage plates, branded with the Radio Corporation of America’s old logo.

Does it feel strange to read an Easter Scripture, without bumping into the Risen Christ? Mark’s gospel may feel abrupt and maybe like something is missing to those who are used to the Easter account in the gospel of John—when Mary Magdalene stumbles upon Jesus himself after she has seen the empty tomb and the angels. Jesus asks her, like the angels did, “Who are you looking for?” She doesn’t recognize him, in her state of distress. She supposes that he is the gardener, and she, again, asks for Christ’s body so that she might tend to it.

Then, Jesus says her name, “Mary,” and finally, Mary recognizes him! And he sends her out to carry the message of his resurrection to the others.

John’s resurrection account is definitely my favorite and my choice for most years when sharing my Easter message. But Mark’s story speaks to me this year. It did in 2021, too, during the pandemic, when churches had been closed, and we were fragmented and discouraged.

The detail about the three women’s greatest fear on the way to the tomb strikes me as very real this year. They keep asking one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us?” Of all the things they could or should be afraid of, such as being women at a cemetery at sunrise, visiting the tomb of someone who was crucified for crimes against the state, they are worried they won’t be strong enough to move the stone. Aren’t they worried that Roman soldiers might be there? Aren’t they worried there might be grave robbers?

This is what we do. We worry about things that we anticipate will be problems or obstacles, and then, they never actually become problems or obstacles. We end up with other problems or challenges we never anticipated.

They reach the tomb, and the large, heavy stone has been rolled away, and surprise, surprise, no Jesus. Instead, the three women—Mary Magdalene; Mary, mother of James who may also have been the mother of Jesus, and Salome, who might have been Mrs. Zebedee— discover a young man in a white robe, who knows why they have come. He immediately tries to comfort them. Because whenever people are in the presence of an angel of the Lord, it’s, frankly, terrifying.

The young man says, Don’t be alarmed. I know the one you are looking for—Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. “He has been raised; he’s not here! Look, there is the place they laid him.”

The angel charges the three women to carry the message of the Risen Christ to the men, who are probably still sleeping and given up hope. “Go, tell his disciples and Peter,” he says, “that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

Then the women—who followed Jesus while he was alive, had provided for him while he was in Galilee, and watched the crucifixion from a distance—run away. “Terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

They fail, just as the three male disciples—Peter, James, and John—had failed Jesus on the night he was betrayed, when he was agitated and brought them with him to the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark 14 to pray. And they kept falling asleep. Three times, he woke them up and scolded them.

The men had failed. The women had failed. Mark’s gospel is over. Scholars agree that anything that comes after verse 8 isn’t part of Mark’s original account. Everything else was added by others later. The story ends in fear, with no one sharing the message with anyone.

Why does Mark do that?

Some think that Mark was interrupted or even died before he finished. Others think that the end of the story was lost. But many believe that Mark meant to end it with the women being too amazed and afraid to share. Theologian William Placher writes, “All through Mark, women have been faithful when men failed to be, and these women have come to the tomb to minister to Jesus’ body when the male disciples are long gone, but in the end, no human beings are completed faithful. Fear captures us all.” [8]

It’s perhaps these features of Mark that speak to us today, “in our own age of uncertainty, when a Gospel that ends with Christ triumphantly present is harder to reconcile with the horrors of the world around us and the doubts within us. Mark throws the ball to us, as he did to his first readers. The three women run away silent, but we have heard the story; it is up to us, in our lives and our testimony, to tell it and keep it alive.” [9]

The Lord will continue to find a way for us to communicate God’s unchanging message of hope in the Living Christ for generations to come, even if our methods of communication might change a little, just as Morse Code fell out of fashion.

Ships didn’t stop communicating. Satellite radio was simply found to be a better way.

But what explains the Radio Squirrels getting together every Saturday morning, for “services” for “The Church of Continuous Wave,” and to share a meal on vintage RCA plates? It seems to me that just when our society declares something, “old-fashioned” or “outdated,” it doesn’t take long for someone to be willing to bring it back to life.

Morse Code isn’t quite extinct. The U.S. Navy still teaches it to some sailors, and in 2017, a British man who had broken his leg on a beach used it to signal for help in the dark with a flashlight. And while most of the Radio Squirrels are retired or nearing retirement, the last time The Atlantic’s photographer went to visit them, she spotted a 17-year-old “hovering around the squirrels in action. Born after the effective end of Morse code, he was nonetheless eager to help keep the jazz going.” [10]

I would like to close my Easter message today with a poem. This is Jan Richardson’s “Seen: for Easter Day.” [11]

You had not imagined

that something so empty

could fill you to overflowing.

and now you carry

the knowledge

like an awful treasure

or like a child

that curls itself

within your heart;

how the emptiness

will bear forth