Easter Hope

Easter Hope 

Happy Easter! This is a different Easter. We can’t go to church for worship. Maybe you can’t get together with all your family because of social distancing. It’s an adjustment: that big Easter egg hunt with lots of kids running around is now a quiet, private hunt in your back yard. It’s disappointing that our Easter holiday is not what we expected. 

But you know what? We are in good company. That’s right if you are disappointed, you need to know that that first Easter, all of Jesus’ followers were disappointed! They were heartbroken. They just felt like pulling the covers over their head and never leaving their bed again. Because Jesus, their teacher, who they loved so much, and who they felt like would live forever, he died. He died a criminal’s death on a cross. They were disappointed in how things turned out, and deeply grieving Jesus’ death. And many of them, like Peter, were also disappointed in themselves, disappointed that they had run away when Jesus was arrested or denied knowing him. 

You know another thing we share with those followers? It was hard for them to have hope, just like it can be hard for us to have hope. We have never been through times like these: a terrible virus threatens to sicken the people we love. The economy is reeling, people have lost their livelihoods, kids are missing out on school, and the road back to normal is hazy, it’s hard to know how things will get put back together. There are many reasons we may be low on hope. 

In the Easter story, after Jesus is crucified and dies, Mary Magdalene is like the rest of Jesus followers: devastated, so disappointed and running very low on hope. She comes to Jesus’ tomb in the morning when it is still dark. Maybe she’s been tossing and turning all night, she can’t sleep, thinking about all that happened to Jesus. She decides she might as well get up and go to Jesus’ tomb, to grieve.  

But when she gets there, the stone at the entrance to the tomb is removed! Jesus is not there! She runs to tell the disciples. Peter and the other disciple, who Jesus loved, they come running and look in the tomb. The other disciple believes. Then they leave. 

Mary doesn’t understand what is going on. She still stands there, weeping. But she does something that shows she still has hope. She takes a break from crying to look in the tomb again. She had looked in before. The disciples had thoroughly checked the tomb out, too. She had been standing by the tomb since they left. She would have seen if someone came or left the tomb. Nothing should have changed. But just in case, she took another look. Mary looked because she had some hope. All she was hoping for was that Jesus’ body was back there, somehow. She wasn’t even hoping for his resurrection. 

She took her second look, and there were two angels. But she didn’t know they were angels. They asked her, “Why are you crying?” She said, because someone took my Lord away.  

She turns around, and there is Jesus! But she doesn’t recognize him. He asks her, “Who are you looking for?” She says she just wants to know where Jesus’ body is. Jesus says, “Mary!” And Mary says, “Teacher!” At that moment, Easter became Easter for Mary! Jesus was alive, and right there in front of her! 

Easter means God is always near. Even when we feel like we’re without God. Even when we are running very low on hope. Because we have never for even one second been apart from God. 

God in Jesus triumphed over death and sin. Jesus’ last words in the gospel of Matthew, Matthew 28:20, are: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” 

I think Mary peeked a second time into that tomb, because she knew, Jesus was always surprising his followers. He was healing the blind and the sick. He was befriending tax collectors and Samaritans. He was feeding 5000 people with five loaves and 2 fish. Jesus was full of surprises. She had hope that Jesus would surprise her again. 

Hope brought Mary to the risen Jesus, to the joy of that first Easter. Hope is trusting that God knows what He is doing, and that with Him, there is always a way. 

Hope is so important. Hope and faith are two things that don’t have a “for sure” attached to them. To hope means you get out of bed in the morning, instead of pulling the covers over your head, and hope means you look again and again for a path forward. 

Hope is more than optimism. Optimism just says that, “everything will be alright.” There’s a little denial in optimism: because sometimes positive thinking won’t change a situation 

Hope is stronger. Hope says, “Even though I don’t know how things will turn out, I’m going to keep trying, and try different roads to get there.” Hope keeps trying. Hope for Mary was not giving up and leaving the tomb. Hope was taking a second look into that empty tomb, believing, “Maybe this time it will be different.” Hope is trusting that God knows what he is doing, and that with him, there is always a way. 

It’s really heartwarming to hear the stories of people who had hope during this coronavirus. There’s teacher who heard one of her students was sad, so she came to her student’s home and sat at the end of the driveway to read a book and talk to the girl for an hour. I read the state of California is sending ventilators to New York, that’s hope, you share because you have hope. There are so many people I know calling others on the phone to see if they need anything. My favorite from the internet is somebody brought their horse to a nursing home to cheer up the residents. In the video you can see the horse nuzzling the glass door, and the residents inside the door laughing. These are all people of hope: they don’t wish just things were better. They keep trying. They don’t give up. They try and try again. 

The good news of Easter is that God is with us. God helps us find a way. So there is reason for hope. You have never for even one second been apart from God. God is with you, always.  Hope is trusting that God knows what He is doing, and that with Him, there is always a way. 

My homework for you this week, is to memorize Galatians 6:9 “⁹Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  That’s my prayer for you: that you don’t give up, you keep doing good, because we serve a surprising God who comes through in surprising ways! Amen.