And so it is Easter! Even when the sky is overcast and the rains seem endless, the beauty of spring is intoxicating! This year, perhaps more than any in recent memory, we need spring! We need signs of new life, signs of hope! The Easter Gospel is a story of hope. We see love, dedication and hope in the women who rise before daybreak to take the spices they’ve prepared to the tomb where Jesus was buried only three days before. In their grief, though still traumatized by the horrific events they have witnessed, they do not give up or retreat in fear. In every gospel the women are there. In every gospel they appear in the earliest hour of daylight, on the first day of the week, as midwives bridging the chaos of Jesus’ agony and death through his astounding transition into a new and glorious life. Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, Salome, Joanna and the others were there through his trial, death and resurrection. Love held them in the drama and Love gave them reason to go on when all seemed lost forever.
The men thought these women were speaking nonsense when they reported an angel had told them Jesus was not in the tomb but had been raised from the dead. It certainly seemed like nonsense. Everyone who had witnessed Jesus’ grueling agony had watched him die a tortured death. But later in the day Jesus appeared again—to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, then later to a larger group of disciples still gathered with the Eleven back in Jerusalem. While the couple from Emmaus were recounting what had happened in their home, and how they had recognized him in the breaking of the bread, Jesus suddenly appeared in the midst of their entire gathering! “Peace be with you,” he said. They thought they were seeing a ghost. Jesus asks why they are frightened. He shows them his hands and feet, tells them to touch him. “See, it is I myself,” he says, then asks for something to eat.
If the four Gospel authors want us to believe anything, it is that Jesus was and is alive and present with his disciples, not just in the past, but throughout time. The Easter story is our story. It is a story of hope, a story meant to bring joy in the knowledge that transitions are nothing to fear. Even in times of pain, confusion and dread Easter people are called to “see with the eyes of hope, even into the darkest moments and places in our world,” says Susan Rose Francois, a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace. “We must be creators of hope,” she says, “in our families, communities, and within our own hearts. God works through our hope, filling the chasms and bridging the divides.” God works through our hope!
It has been a long and challenging Lent coming on the heels of a political tsunami that opened wide the doors of fear and hate. And as Easter arrives we look out over a landscape filled with crises and hear the voice of our risen brother saying “PEACE be with you; do not be afraid.” We are commissioned to be people of HOPE, people who bring HOPE into these uncharted waters—people creating peace. Like the women carrying spices to Jesus’ tomb, we are called to bridge the chaos of these times by tending the wounded and those who seem dead, and witness to life that emerges silently, astoundingly, from those graves. And like the disciples on the road to Emmaus we must listen with open hearts, observing the words and actions of those we think of as strangers, for they too carry the Christ-light within them.
Jesus is our companion on life’s journey, a very real and present companion despite the fact he has a penchant for both APPEARING OUT OF NOWHERE and VANISHING into thin air! He shows up then disappears in the folds of history and personalities, beckoning us always toward the emptying of judgment and openness to his surprising self-revelation. He sits at our table, reveals himself in actions and words we recognize as life-giving. He gives us reason to believe in the future, reason to hope.
It isn’t easy to be people of hope when chaos and violence are all around. But today Mary Magdalene and the women who rushed to the tomb Easter morning as well as the disciples who met Jesus on the road call us out of any lingering cynicism or despair. We are to bring hope and love, courage and strength to our companions in this time and place. As followers of Jesus our hope lies in knowing God is present in the darkest hours of our own lives and in the ebb and flow of history. Though Jesus felt abandoned on the cross, God was still with him. When he died, God was there. When the women found his tomb empty they were told to go tell the others he was alive.
Our task is to remain faithful to the underlying truth of the Easter story. We travel along paths that are necessary, though often terrifying, just as Jesus did. Like Jesus we, and all creation, are held in the arms of Love itself, carried tenderly in the womb of God. This is the very foundation of hope.
To all of us here today Jesus echoes the words he spoke to his disciples centuries ago—“Peace be with all of you.” Live in Hope, and “Do not be afraid.”
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