Matthew 28:1-10
Christian Identity: I Hope
James Sledge Resurrection of the Lord April 24, 2011
After many years of marriage, Joanne lost her husband following a long illness. She took his death very hard. They had a special bond, and she had been extremely dedicated to him. She did not know who she was on her own, and she struggled to make peace with her loss, to regain any sense of normalcy in her life.
Joanne was also a faithful church person who wanted to help others. And so after many, many months, she told her pastor that she would like to talk with those who had lost their spouse, to help them through what she knew was a very difficult time. Her pastor thought that a wonderful idea and encouraged her to connect with a couple of members who had recently been widowed.
Sometime later the pastor received a call from one of those widows. “How are you doing?” the pastor asked her. She said that it was hard, but she was doing pretty well. There were good days and bad, but the good seemed more frequent. “I’m glad to hear that,” said the pastor. “How can I be of help?”
“Would you please ask Joanne to quit calling?” she replied. “I know she’s only trying to help, but she keeps talking about how it doesn’t get any better, how she misses her husband just as much today as the day he died, how the emptiness never goes away. To be honest, I always feel a lot worse after I talk with her.”
When we are going through a time of loss or tragedy, someone who’s been through it before can be a God send. My mother used to volunteer for an organization called CanCare. They connect peopled just diagnosed with cancer with someone who has gone through cancer treatment in the past.
The idea is to provide a friend who has already been down this road to walk with the person. But even more, it is to offer hope. A CanCare volunteer can say, from real experience, “You can handle this. You can do it. Cancer doesn’t have to take over your life. There is hope.” That is why Mary’s help was so unappreciated. It was totally without hope.
Most all of us go through times in our lives when we are lost or hurting or broken, and cannot see a way out. And while it may be comforting to spend time with someone who understands how we feel, what we most need is hope. We need hope that we won’t always feel this way, that it will get better, that we will find some meaning and purpose for our life, that we will find a job, that our children will be okay, that a broken relationship can be reconciled, that there is new life after a failed relationship. We need hope that there is a way from where we are to some place better.
Hope was gone for Mary Magdalene and the other Mary when they set out to the tomb early on a Sunday morning. They had invested all their hope in Jesus, and now he was dead. They had followed him from Galilee, had used their savings to support him and his disciples. But Jesus had been arrested, and his disciples had deserted him. In Matthew’s gospel, no disciples are there when Jesus is crucified. But these women are. Perhaps they are close enough to hear Jesus when he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” If so, it must have seemed that even Jesus had lost all hope.
I do not think these women hoped for anything as they went to the tomb, but their love for Jesus would not let them stay away. Even without hope, they dutifully went to the grave.
But in an instant, everything changed! An earthquake, a divine messenger, and those words, “He is not here; for he has been raised.”
In our society, Christmas draws a lot of people to Church. That’s hardly surprising given the emphasis our culture puts on Christmas. There’s joy and nostalgia and cute story about a little baby. Even people with no real interest in Christian faith come on Christmas Eve to bask in the warmth of old traditions, the nostalgic glow, and the good cheer of the moment.
Easter, by contrast, receives nowhere near the cultural attention. No radio stations have been playing non-stop Easter music in the weeks leading up to today. Our culture’s celebration of Easter pales next to Christmas. And yet the Churches swell on Easter morn.
The reason is simple. We need Easter a lot more than we need Christmas. We desperately need to hear that the greatest moment of hopelessness the world has ever seen was swallowed up in God’s love. “He is not here; for he has been raised.” The very real power of pain and brokenness and loss and evil that all of us encounter, even the power of death itself, is no match for the power of God’s hope, the love of God that is stronger than anything in all creation aligned against hope and life and good.
Along with the author of the book we’ve studied during Lent, one of my all-time, favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption. If you’ve never watched it, you really should. Tim Robbins plays Andy, a bank executive falsely convicted of murder and serving two life sentences in a brutal penitentiary. There he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a long-timer named Red, played by Morgan Freeman. And despite his false imprisonment, Andy never gives up hope of someday being free, of one day opening a hotel and operating a fishing boat in a little Mexican town on the Pacific Ocean. He even asks Red to be his assistant. But Red warns Andy to let go of his hope. “Hope is a dangerous thing,” he says. “Hope can drive a man insane. It’s got no use on the inside.” But Andy will not let go of hope. He even shares hope with others, building a prison library and helping inmates get their high school diplomas.
Finally, after nearly twenty years in prison, Andy pulls of a remarkable escape. A full scale search ensues, but they never find him. Not long afterwards, Red is finally paroled, but after a lifetime in prison, he simply cannot adjust to life on the outside. He is all ready to commit some petty crime so he will go back to prison, but one thing stops him, a promise he made to Andy.
And so he journeys to a field, finds his way to a particular tree, and the rock wall below it. And there, buried at the base of the wall is a box containing money and a letter from Andy. It invites him to come to Mexico, to help Andy get his venture off the ground. The letter concludes, “Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend, Andy.”
The very last words we hear in the movie are Red’s thoughts as he rides a Trailways bus to Fort Hancock, Texas. “I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”
The angel said, “ He is not here; for he has been raised.” And so I hope.
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