The world has gone through 80 years of relative balance, where there were no world wars. There were regional ones, sure, and a lot of tension sometimes, but no world war. The economy in much of the world has been on a basic upward trajectory, even though there were a few potholes along the way and some places were passed by. If you think back to life in 1946 and how things were, and compare them to now, you have to say, it’s been a pretty good run. I think of things almost as a different planet. Even though we are not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, most of us live better today than kings and queens in most of history.
You have to admit, though, that things… today, on this day on the calendar… feel different. There’s a war going on far away, but the impact reaches all the way around the globe and hits us. The world economy is wobbling. No one knows what is going to happen and almost everyone is predicting a difficult time ahead, even if the war were to end tomorrow. Old alliances are shattered and we cannot rely on the people and places that kept that balance for so long.
Darkness can come quickly.
We all remember February 2020, when Covid began sweeping through the world and we were poised, anxiously waiting to see what would happen. The world went into a tailspin, a chasm opened and swallowed us all. Hospitals were overrun. People died. Children missed a year of school. Businesses collapsed. We still feel the effects of the anxiety, the lost 18 months or so, and the difficult recovery afterward.
It’s not just on the world stage, though, that disaster strikes. We all know how fragile our lives are and how tragedy interrupts us in a moment. A phone call or text and we are devastated. Sometimes it comes gradually: a friend or family member with a growing addiction, a business that is failing, or an elderly parent with dementia. Time warps: rushing one moment and then slowing down to a crawl at the next. We are caught in a kind of crevasse, where we fall between the cracks of normal life and are out of commission. The world is moving on and we are not a part of it.
If you have been through grief, you know what this is like. Psalm 23 calls it “the valley of shadow” or the shadow of death. It’s a low place and it is dark.
There is much written about Good Friday and nothing about Saturday… I think every follower of Jesus, whether one of the 12, or the 72, or the 120, or even those on the fringes of his movement, they all experienced a gut-wrenching grief as Jesus was crucified. They could have felt a betrayal because they had pinned their hopes on him. He spoke out so many promises, and already they had seen lives changed. He seemed able to overcome everything, but the jaws of the Roman and Jewish hierarchy’s trap slammed shut on him, and he was tried, beaten, and nailed to a cross… and he died. Some of them watched him die, the others too terrified or ashamed to stick around. But he was dead. And buried in a tomb, closed and sealed.
And Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath where everything stood still, all of those followers were left to sit in the dark. Think of your blackest moment… that was what Saturday was like for them. All of the hope, the euphoria of the miracles, the preaching of the coming Kingdom, the love and compassion, the promises… all those promises, thrown over the wall onto the rubbish dumpoutside the city. They had nothing left except bitter grief and the fear that they would be next. And they sat on Saturday not knowing what to do or what the future might bring.
It is worth it sometimes to linger on the Saturday in order to understand the Sunday, in order to see why various people reacted as they did. All of those emotions impact our brains, and we cannot take in normal things very well, much less supernatural, never-before-experienced things.
One of the best things you can do if you are grieving, is just to do the next thing. Going through the motions of an activity helps your brain begin to function at some sort of level. So three women rose well before dawn, got the perfume and oil to anoint Jesus’ corpse, and went to the tomb. It was their duty, I suppose, and they gritted their teeth at what they might find. The tortured body now still. The stench already setting in.
When they got there, an earthquake had happened, the stone was rolled away and an angel was sitting there. The guards that were supposed to be watching for grave robbers had fainted and then fled the scene at the sight of the angel. The women saw that the tomb was empty and the angels told them that Jesus was risen and to go tell the disciples. There are 4 different versions, but they have common characteristics. Peter and John came to the tomb, saw nothing and left mystified, although John claims he believed but didn’t understand what had happened. “I believe something has happened here, but I don’t know what…” Not quite what he said but it is implied.
Mary, and the other women, actually saw Jesus and he spoke with them. They were blown away, besides themselves with joy and awe and a little fear because of the circumstances. They fell before him and worshipped. Jesus told them to go tell the disciples that he was risen and they had seen him. So they did.
It is difficult to describe something like this – it had never happened before, and hasn’t really ever happened since. Jesus really had been dead. And now,… he was alive, but through the resurrection, he was also changed. He wasn’t really the same. He’d literally been to hell and back. And came back glorified, his whole being was a different quality. They could touch him as before, and he could eat real food, but now, he could come through a locked door into a room. He could just appear. And he did over and over.
One by one, as Jesus met with different followers: they believed and were jubilant. Jesus was back, maybe now he would conquer the Romans. Maybe now he would just heal everyone. Maybe now… But no, he was not going to do that. He patiently spent hours with them explaining the Scriptures, and explaining the road ahead – they were going to take his message to the world. They were going to bring Jesus’ redemption to people everywhere. They were going to build groups of believers who would grow in faith and be like an ever-growing number of little Jesus’s. And all the way through, they’d know the presence of Jesus, not in body, but through his Holy Spirit.
And because they had met him, spoken with him, touched him, eaten meals with him, they had changed / they were different people. They were no longer grieving, no longer in despair, no longer bitter over what they thought were broken promises. He ascended into heaven, and they kept gathering, praying, singing psalms, and looking forward to the next steps.
They had hope. And we know the result.
But wait a minute. Was Roman rule overturned? No.
Did people still get sick and die? Yes.
Was the religious hierarchy still oppressive? Yes.
Was there still poverty and injustice? Yes.
On the surface, nothing had changed. But inside each of the disciples everything had changed. And that was their hope – they were to go out into the world, tell everyone about Jesus and his message, and see the world change one person at a time. And within a couple hundred years, the known world HAD changed. It is still a growing movement.
And that is our hope in the world today. Jesus rose from the dead, and we, as the disciples did, we have encountered him and know he is real. We have, each of us, opened our hearts to him and we endeavor to follow him in our everyday lives.
We all go through tough times, dark days of grief or loss, of difficulty or failure, when very little light gets through. Mary sat at the empty tomb weeping, and that is where Jesus met her. I believe he tells us to come to the place we last saw him, even if we think he is no longer there, and pour out our hearts. Go ahead and weep. That is when Jesus comes to speak hope. It doesn’t always mean everything changes all at once, but a thread of hope can turn into a stream. A flicker of light can become a candle burning in our hearts. And hope will strengthen us during our difficulty…
In the times that we are living in, when the world order is crumbling, when people are generally nervous or anxious about what might be on the evening news about the latest bombings in Iran or Ukraine or Lebanon or Dubai or any other place, OR when the economy falters and prices for everything, especially things we really need, are going up and we don’t know how we’re going to make it, OR when new technology is poised to wipe out a third of the jobs … I mean all these things that we little guys have no control over, but which seem to control us, … What do we do?
That is when I think the message of the resurrection speaks directly to us. Jesus is no longer in the tomb. He rose again, conquered sin and death, and walks with us through this life here that he has given us. The first message is that we don’t need to fear death. Jesus has made it clear that this life is not all there is. A greater more wonderful place awaits us when this life is over. We don’t need to be afraid that the end is the end and it is all over. No, he was the first, but he will lead us all to glory. Christ in us, the hope of glory.
The second message is that he has given us a job to do: to bring comfort and courage and support to those around us. We don’t have to get up on a stage and preach unless he calls us to do that, but he has empowered us to love our neighbor as ourselves. When things are dark, the light that each of us has, shines out to those around us. Opportunities will come to share the hope that we have, as we share the love that God has put into our hearts.
We have one obligation, so to speak, one thing we must pursue in order to hold out this hope through the really bad times in the world. Jesus said, “Abide in me, as I abide in you.” It is hard when the world events are vying for our attention nonstop. But we cannot let ourselves be overwhelmed by it. Pursue God during this time. Endeavor to hold fast to the hope we have.
This world is not all there is.
We have a job to do, to love God and others.
Jesus is with us and will never leave us or forsake us because
He is Risen and is alive forevermore.
Molly Deatherage 