Who Will Roll Away the Stone?, Sojourners Magazine/April 1994

Happy are they who have reached the end of the road we seek to tread, who are astonished to discover the by no means self-evident truth that grace is costly just because it is the grace of God in Jesus Christ….Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship.
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, Mary, Mary, and Salome went to Jesus’ tomb
(Mark 16:2).
Sooner or later, those who have tried to follow Jesus find ourselves weary and broken like the Galilean women, on our way to bury him. It is the morning we awake to that unconsolable, aching emptiness that comes only from hope crushed. This dawn does not bring a new day, only the numb duty of last respects.

From a Sojourners article shortly after publication in 1994 of Who Will Roll Away The Stone?:

“He is going before you…” (16:7). So does the story begin afresh: “Behold, I send my messenger before you who will construct the Way…” (1:2).

But let not the church imagine that Mark’s Easter epilogue begins a different story, one that cancels out or obviates the discipleship narrative. No, the third call to discipleship assumes the other two, which invite us to “leave our nets” (1:17f) and “take up the cross” (8:34). Easter celebrates the restoration of this practice which, according to Mark, represents the only way to deconstruct the domination system and reconstruct a humane society, and thus to revise the story of the world.

Whenever the church abandons this story, it worships an idol. And idols, the prophet Habakkuk reminds us, are deaf and dumb (Habakkuk 2:18f). Only the executed-but-risen-Nazarene can both hear our brokenhearted cries before the stone of impediment and call us to discipleship—as many times as it takes. Including all those whose discipleship has ever ended mired in denial: “Get up, tell the disciples and Peter….” There is no wayward journey that cannot be redeemed by the grace of new beginnings. That is why Bonhoeffer insisted that the church must “recover a true understanding of the mutual relation between grace and discipleship.”

“He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him” (16:7). Jesus goes ahead of the church, undomesticated by our Christologies of entombment or enthronement. Whenever we respond to the invitation to discipleship, we join Jesus where he already is: on the Way. Kyrie eleison!