Sermon "From Darkness to Hope" Easter 2010 John 20:1-18

The first Easter began as the Gospel writer, John, put it, "while it was still dark." For John that meant much more than Easter began before dawn. The power of the resurrection happened before faith could take root, before the realization that sin and death had been defeated forever. We, like Mary Magdalene and the disciples, may come to Easter while it is still dark. Opening our hearts to the mystery of the resurrection will bring a new day and new life lived in the hope of that resurrection.

PRAYER

I don’t know about you, but I have never gone to the grave of a loved one expecting to have that loved one sitting on the gravestone waiting to have conversation with me. In this mortal life of ours dead is dead. It’s the natural course of life. That is why Mary Magdalene immediately suspected grave robbers when she saw the empty tomb, not a resurrection. No matter how many times Jesus had predicted such an outcome, it just wasn’t part of life on this planet. No matter how good Jesus was, no matter how mighty a man of God, no one escapes death. The empty tomb planted a seed of hope, but had not born fruit yet.

Peter and the other disciple arrived at the empty tomb. When the other disciple finally went in and saw it empty, the writer said he believed. Believed in what, the corpse was gone, or that Jesus was out and walking around? "For as yet they did not understand the scriptures, that he must rise from the dead." Again the seed of hope had been planted. But what does it mean for them, for us that Jesus was raised from the dead? That question was still to be answered, for them, and perhaps for some of you.

Our confirmation students can shed some light on the meaning of the resurrection. This year we studied the life of Jesus. At the end of the study I asked them the sermon question this morning. How would life be different if Jesus had not been raised from the dead? Some volunteered that life would be totally different. In what way, I asked? One answer that came from them was that there would be no hope. Is it possible that hope is what Easter is all about? We can’t live without air to breathe, nourishment, love perhaps. Can we live without hope? What would it be like to live without hope? Is living our lives hopefully the bottom line of Jesus being raised from the dead?

Of course I’m not talking about some shallow, naïve kind of hope, such as I hope I will go to heaven some day, or I hope that God will accept me some day. My answer to that kind of hope is, yes you will and yes God does. That’s not hope. That is the reality of the resurrection. Let’s move on from there shall we?

Here is what hope is. I have permission to share a little of what hope means to Jodi and Tim Moehling. Here is what happens when you are told, at a young age, that you have an advanced stage of cancer. Your world stops in its tracks. Your focus is totally redirected to the cancer and how life has suddenly taken a very ugly turn. Life, dreams, the future all seem to melt into a murky unreality. Hope begins to flicker and die out.

After the initial shock, you immediately seek out some source of hope to get life back on track again. That hope might be sought from the medical community, the internet, others who have also battled cancer, from family, including the church family, and from prayers to God for healing and a reversal of the situation.

The Moehlings went to the Mayo Clinic to see what hope the medical community would offer them. At first it seemed like no hope at all. The initial visit left a hopeless feeling in their hearts and Jodi’s body. Tim demanded that they give him some small shred of hope. None was forthcoming.

The next visit to Mayo was different. There were no guarantees or miracle cures offered to eliminate the cancer. There was only this. The doctor told them, "I can help you." That was enough. That made the trip back to Talmoon much easier. They now possessed one thing they were so desperately looking for, hope. So now Jodi is living in that hope. She is living and not dying. That makes all the difference, you see.

The source of the Moehlings hope, of our hope, is the reason we bothered to show up today. Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead. He offers to us the gift of eternal life as we move out from the darkness to the marvelous light of his unconditional love. The resurrection allows us to realize that everything changes about life, how we choose to live it, how we relate to one another, how we endure the difficulties we all encounter in this life.

Old Saint Paul put it this way to the Corinthians, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

We have come to praise God for raising Jesus from the dead and changing forever what it means to live as a child of God. Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the other disciple, stared into the empty tomb and did not grasp exactly what that meant. Yet hope began to take root in their hearts. For Mary it wasn’t until it got personal that she let herself dare to believe Jesus had been raised to new life. She turned and looked at someone she didn’t recognize. Then Jesus said her name, "Mary." From that moment she began to live in hope.

Here’s the thing. We are an Easter people. We are called to live in a future filled with hope. Why? Because we believe for sure that the risen Lord Jesus is on the loose in the world and he knows our names. Amen.