Easter - Recovering Our Hope

Easter - Recovering Our Hope

Luke 24:1-12

{Audio File: https://mega.nz/file/WBcx2AbK#lkq3b11I5onRsoada81vmyg6mGCGBmH11OX0qZ8JY0k}

With this new pandemic that is sweeping across the globe, the coronavirus, all our lives have been drastically changed, and the changes that have taken place are probably the beginning of the changes that will need to take place in the future.

And while we will eventually get back to our daily routines, we’ll probably spend years trying to figure out what happened as we try to make sense of the madness and the complexity of fighting a war on something we cannot see.

Thinking of another tragedy that struck our nation about 20 years ago, that which is now referred to as 9-11, we experienced the largest loss of life on U.S. soil since the Revolutionary War in 1776, or the American Civil War that ended in 1865. It was even a greater loss of life than the attack of Pearl Harbor that precipitated the Second World War. The death toll of the coronavirus, however, has far exceeded it.

Now consider how our lives have changed. Since 9-11 we had longer wait times in lines at airports, but now because of the coronavirus there are no lines at all to wait in. We were were getting used to announcements about terror threats and attacks around the world, now it’s about which city or nation is the hot spot for this new pandemic. And while the war on terror still goes on, we hear nothing about it. Now our news is about this new war we’re in; a war, not against flesh and blood, but against a virus too small to be seen by the naked eye.

And while many people have lost their lives due to these acts of terror, and due to this pandemic virus, what I’d like to do is look at these through the lens of Jesus’s resurrection, trying to see these tragedies in a new light?

Today I want to talk about recovering our hope. The tragedy of 9-11, and the war on terror that followed, and then the attack of the coronavirus, have some similar characteristics with those who witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus, like before the tragedy struck, people thought they were invulnerable, if not invincible.

• The first followers of Jesus believed that since Jesus was Israel’s coming King, therefore, no harm could happen. They believed that God would never allow his only Son to be killed in such a vicious and cruel manner as Roman crucifixion.

• And of course, we Americans think we were invincible as well, immune to the hateful attacks of others. Well, 9-11 prove that to be untrue. And with all of our medical advances, we could never be caught off guard, but that medicine would save the day. But the coronavirus has proven that to be false as well.

Now, I don’t want to minimize the horrible tragedy of 9-11, nor this coronavirus, but the death of Jesus had a uniqueness to it that no other tragedy has ever had before or since. You see, according to the New Testament, it wasn’t just the Roman soldiers who killed Jesus. And it wasn’t just the Jewish religious leaders who conspired to murder Jesus.

According to the Bible, human sin led to Jesus’s execution. And so every time a human being disobeys God, that is, every time someone sins, they participate in Jesus’s execution.

Therefore, if we believe the Bible’s claim, then all of us, or for that matter, the entirely of the human race participated in the crucifixion of Jesus. So while 9-11 was the act of a handful of people taking the lives of thousands, and the coronavirus was exasperated by human pride in itself and its abilities, the death of Jesus was the act of the entire human race taking the life of one innocent man.

So by looking at how the resurrection helped the early Christians gain hope in the aftermath of that tragedy, we can also gain perspective for recovering our hope. Today in our time together, I want to look at some common responses to tragedy and how the resurrection of Jesus Christ can answer the tragedies that happen in life.

Read Luke 24:1-12

Here we find several women arriving at Jesus’ graveside early Sunday morning. They came to finish what was started when Jesus’s body was first laid in this tomb. But because Jesus died on Passover, and because the Jewish Sabbath directly followed, they weren’t able to complete the burial preparation required by Jewish tradition. So they had to wait for more than a day before they could return.

Most people were still in bed when the women arrived at the tomb, and there would have been nothing to indicate that these women expected anything more than to finish their preparations of Jesus’s body. And that’s probably because the resurrection was the last things on their minds.