“Hope in the Midst of Despair”
John 20:1-18
When you encounter the living Jesus, in the midst of despair, everything changes.
In our Gospel Lesson for this morning, we are confronted with a rollercoaster of emotions.
Our story begins in darkness.
Mary Magdalene went to the tomb while it was still dark.
What she had experienced and seen on Friday was still blazing through her.
She had watched as Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior, was beaten, nailed to a Cross and left to bleed and suffocate and eventually die.
His body had been taken down and instead of leaving it for the birds to peck and the dogs to eat, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had gone to Pilate and asked for it.
They wrapped it in spices with strips of linen and laid it in a tomb.
Then a large stone was rolled over the entrance—sealing it.
It was the least they could do for a man who had impressed them so.
Saturday was the Sabbath.
The day when no one could do any work.
And what an awful day it must have been for the followers of Jesus.
They had heard Jesus tell them that He would be arrested and killed—but they had never really believed it would actually happen.
It seemed too awful to be true.
After-all, they had dropped everything in order to follow Jesus—their jobs, their dreams, all their plans.
They had been with Him for 3 amazing years.
They had listened to Him talk about God and love in ways that no one had ever talked before.
His outlook on life was one of radical humility and servanthood.
He had fed 5,000 people with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread.
He had healed the sick.
He had raised the dead.
He had made the insane sane.
He had been their hope.
He had been the answer to this puzzle called life.
And now He was dead.
It had happened so fast.
What in the world would they do now?
How could they go on?
Was life even worth living anymore?
Can you imagine the darkness?
Can you imagine the pain?
Can you imagine the feeling of hopelessness and despair?
Perhaps some of you can.
Perhaps some of you are feeling that way this morning.
Or maybe you can relate because you have been there.
Do you remember what it was like?
I think most of us come to a point in our lives when we come face to face with the stark reality of despair.
On Easter morning, Mary Magdalene stood outside of Jesus’ tomb crying.
She had come to mourn and show her respects to the One Who had meant everything in the world to her.
What else could she do?
But when she got there, the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty.
How could this be happening?
Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse…
Someone or some group of someone’s had stolen Jesus’ body.
Most likely she suspected the Romans or the religious leaders who had put Jesus to death.
Wasn’t it enough that they had killed Him?
Was this some kind of a sick joke to them?
How evil can evil get?
When we think about the history of humanity we see over and over again the unimaginable evil that we are capable of—the unimaginable darkness of it all.
But then, there is something else in there as well, is there not?
As Mary wept, she bent down and looked inside the tomb for another look.
And what she saw were two angels inside sitting where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and one at the feet.
The angels ask Mary why she is crying.
“They have taken my Lord away,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know where they have put him.’”
And at this, we are told that she “turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize it was Jesus.”
She wasn’t looking for a Living Jesus.
She was looking for a unrecognizable dead body.
The way Jesus had looked when He had hung on the Cross.
She thought Jesus was the gardener.
The ordinary.
The only person she would have expected to see around a tomb early in the morning.
But Jesus called her name.
And when He did, she allowed her eyes to refocus and everything changed!!!
Corrie Ten Boom was arrested at the age of 47 during World War II, along with her elderly father, sister, and other family members for hiding Jews from the Nazis.
They were all sent to a concentration camp.
On the way there her father died.
When they arrived at the camp she, her sister, and many other women were ordered to undress in front of mocking soldiers and sent to the showers.
While in the camp her only sister died.
She would later be released and would go on to become an evangelist, traveling the world, sharing her personal story.
At one meeting, after preaching on forgiveness a German solider who had stood guard at the shower room door at her concentration camp came up to her.
She immediately recognized him.
He thrust out his hand and said, “How grateful I am for your message.
To think, that, as you say, Jesus has washed my sins away!”
That’s when all the memories flooded her mind again – the mocking soldiers, the piles of clothes, her dead father and sister.
She couldn’t raise her hand.
In her book “The Hiding Place” she writes about what happened next, “Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them.
Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more?
Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand.
I could not.
I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity.
And so again I breathed a silent prayer.
Jesus, I cannot forgive him.
Give me Your Forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened.
From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His.
When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
In the face of despair Corrie allowed her eyes to refocus, and everything changed.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the greatest gift this world has ever been offered.
It is the gift of God, coming down as The Light in the darkness—and the darkness cannot overcome it!!!
The gates of hell cannot keep it out.
It is the gift of hope for a world caught in death’s cold grip.
It is the “something else” when we look back at the history of humanity.
My wife put it like this the other day, “Imagine a courtroom where someone is on trial for a horrible crime.
Imagine walking into that courtroom and saying to the judge, ‘I did it.
I’m the one who is guilty.
Punish me for the crime.’”
It’s beyond conceivable.
But it is what Jesus has done for us—for all of us.
It’s something that none of us could ever do for ourselves.
Without the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ there is no hope in this life.
Hope is the sense that things will work out, that despite difficult circumstances and painful situations that might lead to despair, something good is around the bend.
Hope is something we cannot live without.
Mary had lost all hope.
And in the midst of it all, Jesus was right there.
She looked at Him, but she didn’t see Him.
She thought He was the gardener.
But then, Jesus called her name.
He offered her the gift of Resurrection—of faith, of salvation.
She opened herself up and allowed herself to receive that gift.
And what was once pitch darkness turned into a great big flash of Light!!!
And she went running to tell the others, “I have seen the Lord!”
And absolutely nothing on this planet has been the same since.
