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.
