April 20, 2025
April 20, 2035; John 20:1-9; Easter Sunday
Hope is not optimism. Optimism is a positive inclination toward the future, a comforting sense that everything will work out for the best. Hope is different. Hope flows from the conviction that God is in charge of this world and that God has promised to give us life. The optimist says, “I just have a good feeling that things will work out well.” The person of hope says, “I believe that God’s power is real and God will never abandon me.” In terrible times, optimism is shaken and can disappear. But hope stands firm because, even in the worst of times, it believes that God has not yet spoken the final word.
In today’s gospel, we encounter three disciples of Jesus. None of them are optimistic. Jesus has been crucified, died, and buried. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb to pay her last respects. But when she sees that the stone has been removed from the entrance of the tomb, she tells Peter. Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved run to the tomb and find that it is empty. None of these disciples understand what has happened. There could be many reasons why someone removed the stone from the tomb, and an empty tomb in itself does not explain what happened to Jesus’s body. But the text tells us that one of those disciples (the one whom Jesus loved) saw and believed. This disciple, even though he did not understand, saw in the displaced stone and the empty tomb reason to believe that God was still active. And if God was active, there was reason to hope.
You and I are gathered here this morning as a validation of that disciple’s hope. For we believe that God has raised up the crucified Jesus into glory and that the tomb is empty because God made it so. The challenge of this gospel for us is that when our lives become desperate or under stress, we, like the beloved disciple, are called to hope. When our families are in disarray because of competition and jealousy, when our heart is broken because we have lost someone we love in death or because someone we cared for turned their back on us and walked away, it is difficult to be optimistic. But we can still have hope that God’s power is real, and that God has promised not to forget us. When we look at all that is wrong with our world—economic and racial injustice, a growing inclination to brutally set aside the needs of the poor and the vulnerable—it may be foolish to say, “Oh, things will work out.” But we can still hope because God is still in charge of this world and determined to set things right.
Easter is not about optimism. Easter is about the hope that the same God who raised Jesus from the dead will also raise us up and open for us a pathway to life.