Hope Springs Eternal With God (Easter)

Isaiah 65: 17-25 & John 20: 1-18

Roger Lynn

April 1, 2018

Easter Sunday

(click here for the audio for this sermon)

(click here for the video for the entire service - the sermon begins at about 23:10)

The darkness is real. The pain and suffering are real. The shattered dreams are real. Death is real. The stories from the Bible which we paid attention to during this past week confirm that it was all real for Jesus and his followers 2,000 years ago. And our own stories, to say nothing of the stories we hear on the news and read about in the papers, confirm that it remains real for us today. As individuals and corporately as a society, we know about suffering and pain. We know about shattered dreams and darkness. If the story of our faith were simply the story of Holy Week, we could all offer a collective shrug and then go on about our business. If Jesus’ death was the last word on the matter, there would be little to capture our imaginations or to lift our eyes towards a brighter tomorrow. If that is all there is, then we might as well go home right now. 

But the bold and even audacious claim we dare to make is that there is more. We are Easter people! Pain and suffering, darkness and death may be real, but they are not the most real, and certainly not the final real. There is life. There is new, vibrant, abundant life. Not somewhere else. Not for someone else. But right here, right now, in the very midst of the darkness. The message of Easter is not a denial of death and darkness. Indeed it embraces those realities. But it also reframes them and in so doing transforms them. When those first followers of Jesus tell their stories about encountering the resurrected Christ, they always include details which point to his suffering and death. He shows them the nail holes in his hands. It is into our current darkness that God’s light shines. It is out of our current suffering that God’s new life calls us. That is the message of Easter which we desperately need to hear. When we pay attention to the presence of the sacred in the midst of us, hope springs eternal.

The people of Israel had been living in exile for hundreds of years.  Their lives had been turned upside down and their destiny was not in their control. Hardship and struggle and strife made up the very fabric of their existence. And it is precisely into this circumstance that the writer of Isaiah 65 dares to offer a bold vision of the kind of new life to which he perceived God to be calling them. “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” (Isaiah 65:17) It is a vision of life which stands in stark contrast to the life they had been living as exiles. “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity. . .” (Isaiah 65:21-23) It is a vision of life which stands in stark contrast to the violence of the world which most people simply took for granted. “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox . . . They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says Yahweh.” (Isaiah 65:25) So, was Isaiah simply delusional? Was he having a psychotic break with reality? Or was he able to step back from the immediacy of his current circumstances enough to catch a glimpse of the larger reality in which we live? Was he able to see that there is, indeed, more to life than simply what we can see and touch and perceive in any given moment?

The stories in the New Testament concerning Christ’s resurrection are many and they are varied. It is difficult, if not impossible, to say with any certainty or precision what, exactly, it was that those early followers experienced. But one thing is clear – for those who had such encounters the experience was real and it was powerful. Something new was taking shape in their world and in their lives and they were catching glimpses of it. Out of darkness comes light. Out of death comes new life. Even when we are not looking for it. Even when we are so blinded by the pain of our current circumstances that nothing new seems capable of breaking through. Even then there is hope, because even then there is God.

Mary Magdalene was so overcome with grief she could barely function. The most important person in her life had been brutally murdered, and leaders from both the government and the temple were complicit. The life she had known – the life she had hoped for – was shattered. There was only grief and pain and darkness. And yet, even then there was something more. Even then God was not finished with her. She didn’t know it. She couldn’t see it. It took a while to break through. There were moments when she almost missed it. There are moments when we almost miss it. But God’s presence in our lives is persistent. The new life which is always and forever flowing forth from God is not easily defeated or ignored. As it was for Mary, so also it is for us – eventually, out of our darkness, out of our grief, out of our pain, we will hear the voice of the sacred calling our name, calling us back to our true selves.

The darkness is real. The pain and suffering is real. The shattered dreams are real. Death is real. But it is not the most real. We are Easter people! And our bold, audacious claim is that in God there is more. In God there is life – new, vibrant, abundant life. When we pay attention to the presence of the sacred which is always in the midst of us, hope springs eternal. And that, finally, is what is real!