There is a story told of a third grade teacher who worked very hard with her students to put on a Passion play for three consecutive nights. She had tried so hard to include every one and to make sure that every part would be covered. She even planned to have someone play the part of the stone that covered Jesus’ tomb. But this did present her with a bit of a problem. None of her students wanted to play that part, so she ended up having a different student assigned to that role each night. It seemed as though everything was in order, at least relatively speaking, just hours before the first night of the play, the teacher learned that the little character who was supposed to play the stone that night was sick and could not participate at all. Now she was in a spot. Only after much coaxing, she was eventually able to convince another one of her students to play the part but only with the promise that this first night was the only night that he would have to do it. All things considered, the first night went off very well. Unbelievably, on the second night, the teacher ran into the same problem. The next student assigned to play the part of the stone was sick and not able to participate. Although she did not want to do this, after looking over her very limited options, she pleaded with the boy who had substituted the night before to play that part one more time. He agreed, but only under the condition that no matter what, he would not have to play that part again on the last night. All things considered the play went off very well once again. Now it was the third night and everything was going well. And this time nobody was sick! However, as the teacher was happily about to tell her two-time substitute that he could finally play his original role, he came to her with a surprising request. He asked if he could play the part of the stone again! She was shocked and asked why? He told her that it was the best part in the whole play. “What do you mean?” she asked. He said, “When I play the part of the stone, all I have to do is let myself be moved, and everyone knows that Jesus is alive.” The play went off very well once again, but much more importantly the teacher and the little boy had learned a lesson that they would never forget.
Every Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. All we need to do is allow our hearts to be moved by that mystery and everyone will know that He is alive.