Hope - Easter Sunday

Hope - Easter Sunday

Author: Pastor Scott Schul
April 20, 2025

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  When we say these words, they are more than a nostalgic tradition or a quaint custom.  These words are the foundation of our faith.  They are a prayer.  They are the Good News that the angels in our Gospel first proclaimed to the women, the Good News the women carried to the apostles, the Good News the apostles carried throughout the Mediterranean region, and the Good News that generations of Christians over two thousand years have carried and proclaimed throughout the world.  These are the words that are now my responsibility, my obligation, my honor, my privilege, and my joy to declare to you this Easter morning.  Christ is risen!

But even as we hear those words and repeat them, do we really believe them?  Are we ready to invest our daily lives, our future, and indeed our very eternity in the truth of Jesus’s resurrection?  After all, the people in today’s Gospel knew Jesus in the flesh.  They were with him day-after-day.  They had even seen him raise three separate people from the dead, including Jesus’s dear friend Lazarus.¹  They had also heard Jesus himself say, on repeated occasions, well documented throughout the New Testament, that after his crucifixion he would, on the third day, rise again.

And yet when Jesus’s closest friends and followers realized that the tomb was empty, they struggled to believe in his resurrection.  Our Gospel lesson states that the women at the tomb were perplexed… disturbed… at a loss… when they couldn’t find his body.  And even when angels appeared to them, the women were not comforted or reassured; quite understandably they were terrified.  But they mustered enough courage to share this incredible story with the apostles, only to have it dismissed as an “idle tale”… nonsense… a frivolous story… sheer fantasy.

And so if they struggled, is it any wonder that we might struggle to believe that Jesus rose from the dead?  What is the outcome when the words “Christ is risen” strike us as an idle tale or a silly, childish fable?  Without Christ’s resurrection as our daily anchor, both life and death lose all meaning and purpose.  And without meaning or purpose, despair takes control of us.  Despair quickly invites fear to take up lodging in our hearts, and fear exists to drive out love, because as we know, God is love.  And so it’s clear how dire and empty our existence becomes when we lose trust in the truth and reality of Jesus’s resurrection.

The antidote to all of this is hope.  Hope was the message of the empty tomb.  Hope was the angels’ message.  Hope was the message the women at the tomb conveyed to the apostles.  And hope is what Christ wants us to possess this Easter morning.  Hope is such a powerful thing, friends.  I want to share a little story with you about the power of hope.  I apologize that it’s so personal and, compared to the resurrection, so trivial.  But I think it simply and clearly illustrates the transformative power of hope.

If you’re a guest today from out of town who may not have seen me since last Easter, you might be wondering where the rest of me went.  It all started just before Christmas 2023.  My dad was dying, and the diabetes which ruined his quality of life was my inevitable future if I didn’t lose weight.  But I had no hope that I could do anything about it.  I was convinced that I was powerless due to factors like my age and genetics.

But a doctor assured me that it was just a matter of math.  Take in fewer calories than you burn, and you’ll lose weight.  Even at my age?  Yep – even at your age, she assured me.  I was skeptical, but I had just enough hope in her words to give it a try.  So on December 18, 2023, I began tracking every single thing I ate, and that self-discipline, fueled by hope, changed my life.  I am over 100 pounds lighter than I was when I started this journey, my quality of life is better, my life expectancy has lengthened, and I’m back to the size I was in high school, over 40 years ago.  I stand before you as an example of what hope can accomplish.

Friends, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have a hope far more significant than this.  In his death and resurrection, Jesus conquered death itself and overcame the power of sin and evil.  This accomplishment would merely be an interesting historical curiosity if Christ’s victory was solely for his own benefit.  But the Bible consistently proclaims that his victory was for us as well.  For example, in our lesson from 1st Corinthians, Paul describes Jesus’s resurrection as a “first” fruit of that victory.  Not a “last” fruit or a “solitary” fruit.  One day, all of us, without exception, will be resurrected.  In Christ we have forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life.  

So you see, we are steeped in hope.  Our hope in Christ gives us strength and endurance in times of suffering.  Hope gives us meaning and purpose when the wear and tear of daily life threatens to overwhelm us and distract us from the bigger picture.  Hope keeps despair and fear at bay when it feels like everything is spinning out of control.  Hope keeps us anchored to our Savior when we feel powerless and adrift.  Hope creates a holy garden where love can bloom, surrounding us with the aroma of God.

But how can any of us know that Christ really did rise from the dead?  We weren’t there when it happened.  Neither were those women or Peter or any of the apostles.  I have no irrefutable facts with which I can conquer your questions.  I have no logic or philosophy that can cleverly persuade you.  I only have faith to share, faith that was first shared with me by family, friends, and pastors; faith that was similarly handed down to them over the ages; faith that had its origins in that empty tomb outside Jerusalem from a handful of women who had only planned to tend a corpse and who instead trusted the word of angels.  That faith has been passed along like a candle’s flame, lighting up one heart after another, and now flickers before your face this day, ready to set your heart ablaze.

Faith is simply that first small, tentative step of hope, a willingness to trust and believe in something greater than what you can measure or analyze or philosophize, a willingness to surrender to the greater wisdom and love of Christ himself.  Can you take that one small step?  One of my favorite lines from the poet Emily Dickinson is, “I dwell in possibility.”  Can you dwell, even momentarily, in the possibility that Christ has risen from the dead, for you?  Because we have the promise that through God’s Word and Holy Sacraments, that small flame of faith you light today will grow brighter through the power of the Holy Spirit, who, as Martin Luther noted in his Small Catechism, has called you through the gospel, enlightened you with his gifts, made you holy and keeps you in the true faith.²

But if you still wonder whether you can dare to place your hope in Jesus, remember that the tomb wasn’t empty just because Jesus had risen from the dead.  He could’ve just remained there.  But instead, from the very start, he was on the move, not waiting for his friends to find him but, instead, racing off to find them, bless them, and rekindle hope and love in their hearts.  He has likewise been chasing after you so that today he can tell you that he loves you; so he can reassure you that sin and death have no ultimate power over you; so he can calm your fears and offer you forgiveness and healing for your soul; and so he can transform you by love into the person you long to be, the person he created you to be.

So rejoice.  Love relentlessly.  And most of all, live in hope.  Because Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Citations
¹ See Matt. 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-24, 35-43; Luke 8:40-42, 49-56; Luke 7:11-17; and John 11:38-44.
² Luther’s Small Catechism, Explanation of the Third Article of the Creed.

© 2025 Rev. Scott E. Schul, all rights reserved

Gospel Text: Luke 24:1-12

¹ On the first day of the week, at early dawn, [the women] came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ² They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³ but when they went in, they did not find the body. ⁴ While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. ⁵ The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said
to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. ⁶ Remember how he told you, while he was still in
Galilee, ⁷ that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." ⁸ Then they
remembered his words, ⁹ and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰ Now it was Mary
Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. ¹¹ But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹² But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by  themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

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