Easter Sunday

What caused that stone to roll away,

Right before the eyes of Roman guard?

The Bible would say it was angels,

Or God himself rolled the stone,

Surely both are capable.

The Holy Spirit itself could remove that weight,

The oppressive force of Friday,

The doubt, denial, despair, and death,

Of Friday.

It could have been thieves in the night,

Cowardly disciples who had fled since

The hour of their teacher’s demise.

They could have stormed the guard,

These men that denied the man who

Healed before them, was transfigured before them,

They could roll the stone away and steal the body,

To fulfill a prophesy they clearly no longer

Believed in.

It could have been the tremble of earth,

Aftershocks from its weeping on Friday,

That rolled away the stone

Sealing up the Son of God.

Or perhaps it was a quake of something

Far deeper

At a frequency so high only the stone could hear

Only the grave, the captor of the Most High, would know

A chorus of voices, the cries of the lost,

The echoes of every sin he heaped upon himself,

On that Good Friday.

Was it the plea in darkness of the captives,

The inebriated promises of the broken,

The seductive falsehoods of prostitutes,

The ravenous, the unquenchable, the diseased,

The deplorable and despicable, the abused,

The used, the abusers and the users,

The addicts, the pimps, the harlot,

The liar, the thief, the murderer,

The vengeful, bitter, wrathful,

The deceivers and the deceptive,

The proud, the forgotten, the dying.

We sinners who heaped you upon that cross

We sinners who spit in your face

Was it our cry that shook the earth that day?

Was it mine Jesus?

Was it a battle cry that rolled that stone away?

The need so great the earth quaked in fear

At the size of what must be done,

To save us.

Because on Friday, we lost hope,

It should have been us, but it was you

Our warrior, our teacher, our king

And when you surrendered your spirit,

We cried out as we lost hope.

To dare him to do so much more than

Die for our sins

But rather to do something much bolder

To live for us

To not just go down swinging,

But to win.

We need you and more than just a broken you

We need more than a sacrificial lamb

We need a savior

Because there is a stone on my life

And it keeps me from my hero

So I shall shout with a voice of triumph

Because the sobbing was for Friday

But the stone has rolled away

And the tomb is empty

Because it should have been me on that tree,

Because he didn’t just die for me,

He lived