The Very Stones

As Jesus wends his way down from the Mount of Olives and heads into Jerusalem, his fans and followers wave palm branches and cry out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” This freaks out some of the religious authorities, who order Jesus to “rebuke your disciples,” to silence them. These authorities know the crowd won’t listen to them, so they tell Jesus to shut them up. But Jesus replies, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the very stones will cry out.”

Sometimes when I hear this, I’m reminded of the “rock concert” my stepdaughter made for her dad some 40 years ago, imagining the stones themselves rising up to sing the glory of the Lord.

While that’s not quite what Jesus had in mind, his words do recall familiar places in scripture where everything from stars and sea-monsters, mountains and hills, fire and fog, and all kinds of trees are all called upon to “praise the Lord” (Psalm 148); or where “the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12). If the people are to stop praising Jesus, in other words, the rest of creation will resound with praise. The palm branches that people wave are themselves symbols of victory, peace, and eternal life—certainly appropriate trees to be used to praise our Lord.

So if all of creation sings praise to our Lord, why does Jesus choose stones as his focus: “the very stones will cry out”?

Stones have a special place in scripture, from the stone altars Abraham built, to the stone pillow Jacob slept on when he dreamed of the ladder between heaven and earth, to Deuteronomy’s image of God as the Rock: “…ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock, [God’s] works are perfect, and all [God’s] ways are just.” Jesus himself is named the cornerstone of the church.

And I suspect, if we think about it, we’ll find that stones hold special meaning for us as well. Besides the “rock concert” Laurie made all those years ago, my husband and I have containers of stones all over the house, collected from local Maine beaches and the Mount of Olives, from Iona, Ephesus, the Arizona desert, and from the Center for Grieving Children. When my son, my husband, and I completed our time at the Center after Laurie died of cancer in 1988, we were each given five stones: one jagged one to acknowledge that our grief for Laurie will always have rough edges, and four smooth stones offering hope for softening the anguish.

Back when I was preparing for ordination as a deacon in the late 1990’s, I searched for stones with collars, and carried one in my pocket as a prayer—I still have some on my “Mary altar,” among Lewisian gneiss (three billion year old stones from Iona), a stone carved with a tiny labyrinth, and a green stone with a carving of the Chinese symbol for mother. And during the pandemic, people of all ages here in Brunswick, Maine, painted stones and left them around town as a way of communicating during social isolation. Stones speak to us in many ways.

That variety of ways reminds me of doubting Thomas, who refuses to believe until he touches Jesus’ wounds—and Jesus shows up,  inviting him to do so. In the same way that we are offered what we need to help us find our way to Jesus, we are offered the whole world of nature in which to see the glory of God. And stones are a piece of creation that we can carry in our pockets, hold in our hands, pile into bowls, paint, carve—knowing they will not wilt or die. Holding Lewisian gneiss in my hand is the closest I will come to touching eternity.

So on this Palm Sunday, or sometime during Holy Week, my invitation is to collect stones (if you are in a place that makes such an endeavor possible) or to consider purchasing smooth river stones from a garden center, and ask the children in your care why they chose a particular stone and what they might like to do with it: paint it, carry it, put it on the dining room table as part of a centerpiece. Remind them that Jesus said the stones themselves are symbols of how creation sings his praise in ways we may not hear, but can hold.

Next Sunday, on Easter, celebrate that the very stone which was supposed to keep Jesus in the tomb was rolled away; the heaviest stone in the world could not keep Jesus in the grave. The very stones sing his praise!