The Risen Christ within us. Easter Day 2020. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Easter Day ~ 12 April 2020

One of the books that had a big impact on me when I was young is The Plague, by Albert Camus. It’s a novel set in the Algerian port city of Oran, which suffers an outbreak of bubonic plague in the 1940s. The city is quarantined, which means really really cut off from the world in an age before television and the internet, and the conditions become pretty hellish. Bubonic plague is a particularly horrible disease, with hideous symptoms and a high mortality rate, so the book contains scenes of horrific suffering, as well as moments of great kindness and courage. And it also raises the question: when do you know it’s over? When not a single person has the disease? That’s not the way Camus sees it. Towards the end he writes: “Indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of the plague was ended.” There are people who die after that, but the return of hope is what breaks the emotional power of the plague and sets people free from living in fear.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the great pivotal moment in human history, the moment when eternal life ceases to be wishful thinking and becomes a living hope. All of the women and men who followed Jesus will die. Many of them will be brutally killed because of their faith. But after the resurrection, they will not fear death the way they did before. The Letter to the Hebrews says that Christ came to free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death (Heb. 2:15). After Jesus was raised from the dead, those first believers lived in hope of resurrection. And with the first stirring of that hope, the dominion of death was ended.

But let me say a few words about hope. It is not the same thing as optimism, not a vague feeling that things will somehow get better. Archbishop Desmond Tutu spent years fighting against apartheid in South Africa, and then worked for reconciliation and justice after apartheid was finally abolished. Over the years he has advocated for peace in many places of conflict. Someone once asked him if he felt optimistic about human beings and their ability to make a better world. Archbishop Tutu replied, “No, I’m not optimistic  at all. But I am full of hope.” In the New Testament, hope is one of the three greatest virtues, along with love and faith. It is a sign and fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. To hope is to believe that God will bring about the future God envisions, a future we can begin to see even now.

So I could preach that because Jesus has been raised from the dead, we should live in hope. And that’s absolutely true. We don’t need to be afraid of death. We will share in the resurrection of Christ, death is not the end, this life is just the beginning. To know that is to live in hope and to be free.

But, important though it is, that’s not my message this morning. I want to emphasize the obverse of that. If it is true that to experience the Risen Christ is to live in hope, it is also true that to live in hope is to experience the Risen Christ. People often want signs of the resurrection, proof, if you will, that Jesus is really raised from the dead. But the greatest evidence lies within us. One of the certain ways the Holy Spirit assures us that Jesus is alive is through the gift of hope. When we feel a surge of hope — not a superficial looking on the bright side of things but a deep conviction that God will bring good to pass — then we are experiencing the Risen Christ. Over the years of my priestly ministry, I have talked to many people in the worst circumstances: wives who have lost husbands, parents who have lost children, people who have lost jobs, addicts who have hit rock bottom, cancer patients in terrible pain. The suffering can be excruciating, but I am awed by the people who move forward in hope. I see Jesus in that. And I have tasted this myself. On my darkest days and in my worst hours, I have felt hope welling up within me, seemingly out of nowhere, as a pure gift, the assurance that all shall be well because God shall make all things well. And I have come to recognize such hope as a sign of the Risen Christ within me. Put simply, when we are given the grace to live in hope and not despair, then we know that Jesus is alive and that we are even now living in the Kingdom of God.

And the world needs that kind of witness. In the middle of a pandemic and all the turmoil that goes with it, we need to be people of hope. Not denying the suffering or trying to explain it away, but looking for God to move in the midst of it. God did not cause this crisis, but God can use it for good. So we can hope for the pandemic to end. We can hope for acts of love and mercy to abound. We can hope that this will lead to a more just and equitable society. We can hope that people will discover or rediscover what really matters in life. We can hope that a better world will emerge from this. We can hope that God will bring this to pass.So I urge you on this Easter morning - to embrace the hope that is within you, even if at times it feels feeble, because it is God’s gift to us. Camus wrote many other things besides The Plague. And in one of his other works he said, “In the middle of winter I discovered within myself an invincible summer.” Jesus Christ risen from the dead is our invincible summer. To live in hope is to feel the warmth of that summer — and to know that it will last forever.