Hope and Resurrection
Date: April 5, 2026
Readings: Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10
Preacher: Fr. Travis O'Brian
HOPE AND RESURRECTION
Hallelujah! Christ is Risen.
The Lord is Risen indeed. Hallelujah!
May his grace and peace be with you.
May he fill our hearts with joy!
First of all, let me say how beautiful it is to see you all gathered here, and to celebrate this holy day together – this day of resurrection which knits us together as children of an unfathomably wonderful promise. I want you to assure you, perhaps especially those of you who do not attend church frequently, are unsure of your faith, unsure quite what you believe: if you wonder whether it is God speaking in that feeling which lingers in the quiet of your heart about whether you should come to church more often, about whether it is time to care more attentively to the needs of your spirit – if you wonder whether it is God speaking to you in that feeling, I want to assure you that it is. And how beautiful it is that you are here now.
My father died a little more than 2 ½ years ago. Today also happens to be his birthday. My Dad’s death was devastating for those who loved him, for he was still so full of energy, so full of plans. Suddenly, all that life, that song of the day’s joy, the hope that filled the heart of my father – was gone. But where did it go? Did all his love and thanksgiving simply come to nothing? All we know to be good, all we love and cherish, does it all end when death comes? What does your heart tell you? That is the question Easter puts before us. That God raised Christ Jesus from death into life again: what does this declaration, this central, joyful, affirmation, his resurrection, promise?
To the modern mind, it makes no sense! If only there were some verifiable, common experience to lend the story plausibility! But is there really no such experience? The thing is, over the course of the last few hundred years we’ve trained ourselves to call “true,” to count as “real,” only those things we can affirm by demonstration. The result is a world in serious spiritual crisis. For we have largely forgotten that the realities which make us most truly human cannot be verified through scientific demonstration. Take hope, for example. If we seek reasons for why we hope only in observable facts – in evolutionary theory, say, or the facts of history – the reasons we find only undermine the very hope we have! To hope is to be aware of a promise for life which the future will bring. But the “facts” promise no such thing. All the facts can promise is death. From the viewpoint of demonstration, to hope is thus to be deluded. And yet, if I do not hope, where am I? I cannot live without hope.
Likewise, to say I love my father is to express something more than my feelings. To love him is to claim to have seen something true about him. It is to know that he is good – not that his actions or achievements are necessarily good, but his very being is good; and good not just in my own eyes. If we search for reasons why we love only in demonstrable “facts,” in the chemical circuitry of our brains, for example, the reasons we find only undermine the love we have! From the viewpoint of demonstration, what love is, what love knows, is a delusion. And yet, if I do not love, where am I? I cannot live without love.
To live I must hope; and to hope is to commit my life to the truth of hope. To live I must love; and to love is to commit my life to the truth of love. Hope and love are demanded of us in the same way that freezing is demanded of water molecules cooled below 0 degrees Celsius. We wouldn’t be what we are, not truly human, not the beings we know ourselves to be, if we did not love and did not hope. In the heart of my heart, I find commitment to hope so far-reaching even death can’t cut it short. I find a love so limitless, it commits me to life beyond the facts of the world. As we look inwardly, we begin to see that what seems impossible, the resurrection of Christ Jesus, in truth makes sense of everything! All we hold most dear, all our hope, all our love, our confidence that goodness is stronger than evil, that love embraces the whole of life and the whole of death, all our most human commitments, find validation and fulfillment there.
If you had asked my Dad if he believed in the resurrection, I honestly don’t know what he would have answered. But what was undeniable for him, the faith he lived by, was that life is truly good; that love is the most real reality; that hope promises victory over every presenting evil. The question the empty tomb puts before us, is whether our commitment to the truth of goodness and love, the truth of hope, is only a mirage, a little false light floating on the surface of an otherwise dark universe – or whether they bind us to the truth. What does your heart tell you? What makes it possible for you to live? What makes sense of your life?
For my part, I choose to be faithful to my experience. For my part, I will not deny the love or the hope that is in me. I believe in the resurrection because only Christ’s resurrection guarantees the reality of the commitments that I live by. I believe because the more I put my whole trust in that promise, the freer my heart, the greater my hope, the wider my love, the more joyful my thanksgiving – the more abundant my life.
We say that the resurrection is difficult to believe. But in another sense, to believe is the most obvious, the most inevitable thing. The music of resurrection rises within our hearts and flows out of us in our loves and in our perception of goodness; in the hope that knows, in a place too deep for words, that the future belongs not to death but to God; in the joy that moves in us despite a world of grief; in our great thanksgiving for all we are and all we have been given. Christ’s resurrection is God’s promise that nothing in life and nothing in death can separate us from His love – and that this, the Love of God, is the greatest truth, the most real reality of all.
Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is Risen indeed, Hallelujah!
AMEN