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 Matthew 28:1-20
When I was young, still in my twenties, somebody said to me, "Arthur, one of your weaknesses is your addiction to hope. You are in denial of reality!" I took this comment seriously, as I had considerable respect for the man. He was a person of great intellect, with a discerning mind, and he had pretty good instincts. His opinion stayed with me for many years.
But I have lived enough years now to confirm my youthful conclusions about hope. I have witnessed darkness turning into light, tragedy to triumph, despair and depression to life. And I have observed the effects of hope in my own life. I am concluding that hope is a very good thing.
I now believe that what was referred to as my addiction has not been a weakness; it has been a strength. I am happy to confess my addiction to you today. I wish I could turn back the clock a few years, and go to the Broadway production of South Pacific and stand next to Mary Martin as she sang that snappy little tune, which includes the words, "I'm just a dope with a thing called hope and I can't get it out of my head." And I won't let it go from my head.
Looking back on it, I see that the energy for the hope in my life has increasingly come from the Easter Sunday morning experience, from the Easter event itself--that from total darkness, incredible evil, has come something so life-giving, so extraordinary.
Each Saturday when I get the New York Times, I open to the section where the church advertisements are to check our ad and see what other churches are doing. A number of years ago I opened to the church page on the day before Easter, and one of the leading churches in New York had a wonderful ad. Along the top was the name of the church and at the bottom just the minister's name and the times of the services. Against a dark gray background, in big white letters, was the word HOPE. That was it. The synonym for Easter is hope.
Frederick Buechner, the contemporary theologian, who has a most creative and innovative mind, says about the Cross, "The Cross represents the very worst of humanity and, at the same time, the very best of humanity." You know what the worst is: the folly, the evil, the cruelty to Jesus, who only was and did good, who was vilified and then crucified. The best of humanity is the way Jesus conducted Himself both on the way to the Cross and on the Cross: with grace and strength, with dignity and forgiving power. As a result we look to the Cross not as a sign of destruction, but as a sign of hope and the belief in the possibility of the best of humanity.
Peter, who was in Jesus' inner circle, was a good man, impulsive, bright, eager, and enthusiastic. Like all good people, he occasionally did some dumb and destructive things. During the last fifteen hours of Jesus' life Peter did some horrendous things to one who was so important to him, his best friend, his leader, his Lord.
Jesus had asked Peter and two other disciples to be His support system while He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemene. Jesus' last night was unbelievably difficult. He needed to be supported, but Peter and the other two disciples could not stay awake. Three times Jesus had to wake them up. It was deeply hurtful to Jesus that Peter kept falling asleep.
Later that night, feeling there might be a confrontation, Peter ran home to get his sword, which he hid under his robe. When the confrontation happened, macho Peter pulled it out and cut off the ear of one of the soldiers. Jesus chastised him. "No more of this!" He exclaimed. "Remember that he who lives by the sword dies by the sword."
The next morning, after Jesus was arrested and while He was being put through the mock trial which would lead to His crucifixion, Peter, who was hiding in the town, was accosted by strangers. "We know you. Aren't you one of His followers?"
"No," Peter responded. Three times he was asked this, and three times he denied following Jesus. At one point he actually said, "I don't even know the man." After Jesus had died and was put into the tomb, Peter must have felt awful--laden with guilt and remorse for not being there for Jesus.
Judas was also in the inner circle, a trusted advisor, a superb strategist. He was a visionary, and had great ideas about what Jesus could accomplish for His people. When Jesus chose the way of the Cross instead, Judas felt betrayed. And, as people often do when they feel betrayed, he betrayed Jesus by identifying Him for the authorities. When he realized what he had done, that he had contributed to the death of this remarkable man, he was remorseful. Burdened with guilt, he committed suicide.
Peter eventually redeemed his life. Judas gave up hope.
He would have benefited from what today we call the three-day rule. Any time you find yourself in a terrible position, facing a major problem or decision--wait three days. Give it time; allow your own internal processes, and give God a chance to do something with you.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, creative, innovative, deeply interested in the influence of the spiritual on the physical, far in advance of so many medical people, before giving a speech here, pulled me off to the side and excitedly said, "Arthur, I just heard a preacher say this: 'After Friday comes Sunday.' What do you think of that? 'After Friday comes Sunday!' Isn't that terrific?"
After every Friday experience we have, even though it might be tragic and difficult and depressing, Sunday always comes. Remember to keep hope going, and remember the three-day rule: after Friday comes Sunday.
The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, "The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide." Picture that. How many times, when you have reached the lowest point, has there been a higher power encouraging you to wait just a few days, just a little while; give it one more chance? And how often, when you have heeded this voice, has something good happened? I often compare hope with a piece of thread. You know how weak a single strand of thread can be. But a thread of hope is enough to carry us over the deepest abyss if we just hang on, with hope.
Dr. Jerome Groopman, who is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, recently wrote a book called The Anatomy of Hope. He tells the story of his own journey from feeling cornered and completely hopeless, and how he per-severed and came through it. He included similar stories about his patients as well. He describes hope this way: "Hope lifts us up." And I love his next words: "Hope has wings."
The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, wrote what is surely the most extraordinary essay on love in any religion, in any language. He says that even if you have all knowledge and if you understand all mysteries, yet have no love, you are nothing. I am sure you know the famous passage that begins, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude...."
At the end of the chapter, Paul says, "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."
I think we all agree that love is the greatest of these three. It is essential to our lives. Without it we wither and shrivel up. What comes next in importance? From time to time I ask people what they think; they usually say faith. But I think no, a person can get by--not very well, but a person can get by--without faith. But when hope is gone, the lights go out. Everything shuts down. Hope ...
A few weeks ago I had a call from a dear friend, Bill Boetcker, three months shy of his 95th birthday. He was an Elder in this church for many years, and after his retirement he moved to Poughkeepsie, New York. We stayed in close touch, and when his wife of more than fifty years died, I participated in her funeral service.
Recently he called me and his voice was buoyant. "Art," he asked, "what are you doing on March 6th at 1:30 in the afternoon?"
"What do you have in mind?" I asked.
"I'm getting married," he responded joyfully. "Her name is Beryl," he told me. "I met her in 1945 in London, when I was a colonel in the Army and she was a young war bride, married to my brother-in-law. I helped her get into this country. Now she is a widow, and we recently began seeing each other. We love each other, and we don't want to waste any time. We want to get married right away."
It was a beautiful wedding! You should have seen them, standing at this altar--the glow, the radiance, the passion in their faces as they looked at one another. How different everything would have been if, after Bill's wife died, he had just shriveled up, turned the lights out, and shut down.
My mentor, Homer Surbeck, who was a very well-known and successful Wall Street lawyer, was a life-long bachelor. Yet one morning several years after he retired he called me and asked me to lunch. When we met, he announced, "I want you to be one of the first people to know. Yesterday was my 74th birthday, and I got married."
He lived for twenty-one more years, and I know for a fact that the happiest years of Homer Surbeck's life, which was a great life, were its last years.
Keep hope alive. Hope has wings like a butterfly.
In the scripture that is always a part of the Easter service, from the Gospel of Matthew, the two Marys are described going to the tomb early in the morning on the third day after the Crucifixion.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.'"
A key phrase for me is this: "He is going ahead of you." Whatever pain you might experience, whatever suffering or hardship, Jesus has gone before you and has already experienced it. He has been there; He has been there ahead of you. And He has promised always to be with you in whatever you might experience. You are never alone. And because He came through victorious, you too can emerge victorious.
A number of years ago a young woman from this church, telling me about a recent job interview, gave me a great gift. I had asked her if she had been nervous, and how it had gone. Whenever she is in a delicate or testing situation, she said, "I always ask Jesus to go there ahead of me, and be present with me in the interview or the conversation."
I have mentioned this to many, many people over the years, and every one has said that asking Jesus to go ahead of them has made a positive difference in their experiences.
Recently, I was talking with a young man, struggling to support his family, with a big mortgage and several children. He said that his wife was upset with him because he was never home. "I'm a good father," he said, "and I do my very best to spend time with my family, but I'm in a competitive field and I have to put a lot of time into my job. It is a big conflict for me." They had scheduled a time to talk about the problem. So I suggested that he send Jesus ahead of him into the living room.
A couple of days later he called. "We had a very good conversation," he reported, "and your suggestion to have Jesus there made all the difference."
I close with a poem which is about hope. Joaquin Miller, a poet you may know from the 19th century, was fascinated with Christopher Columbus. He had read Columbus' logs from the first journey his three ships took to the unknown parts of the world, and he became inspired by what Columbus put at the bottom of every day's log: "This day we sailed on." It inspired this poem.
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores;
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: "Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what must I say?"
"Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'" ...
They sailed. They sailed.
Then spake the mate:
"This mad sea shows his teeth tonight.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?"
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!"
Gracious God, help us, motivate us, inspire us to keep sailing on, to hold on to hope. In remembrance of the Resurrection of Jesus, glorious Easter renews our hope. AMEN |
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