Matthew 28:1-10 Hope. It is a little word we use every day -- "I hope you have a good day," "I hope you are feeling better," and so on. Because it is an ordinary word we generally don't give it the attention it is due. Yet this little word hope is hugely big and powerful. It carries enormous positive energy, incredible life force. Many times I have seen people at the end of their rope, struggling against long odds. They may be having problems in a business, grieving a broken dream or relationship. At some point along the way they finally give up hope. When this happens, everything falls apart. Hope always is the last thing to go. When we were created, embedded deep within the human psyche was hope. Without hope, humanity would have abandoned this earth centuries ago. St. Paul gives a perspective on hope in his magnificent letter on love -- First Corinthians, chapter 13. At the end of that chapter he summarizes his comments on love by saying, "So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." We cannot live without love. An infant without nurturing love will die. Adults who do not have love in their lives, although they are still breathing, so often are dead inside. It is true -- the greatest is love. Often I will ask people what comes next, and usually they immediately say that faith comes next. Yet as important as faith is, a person can get through life without it. They may not do very well, but they can manage. But a person cannot get through life without hope. When I was a graduate student and training to be a hospital chaplain, a doctor gave a talk on hope. "Never give up hope ahead of the patient," he said, telling us never to underestimate the power of hope deep down in the soul and psyche of every human being. When I talk about hope, often I will mention the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow and I were both born and raised in the same home town, Portland, Maine. The house where he grew up is gone, replaced by a commercial building, and beyond that is Portland Harbor. About two hundred yards from his house was a little beach. I think about how much time he must have spent as a little boy on that beach, in the warmer weather, wading and watching the tides. Tides in Maine, as you may know, are very big. At high tide the water rises very high, and at low tide the water draws way back. Low tide seems to last forever and then, almost imperceptibly, the tide turns around and you see the water coming back in. As a boy watching the tides go in and out Longfellow must have wondered, "When will the tide ever turn?" I like to think that as a result of living on the Maine coast, as an adult Longfellow was able to write, "The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide." It is when we are at the very bottom, the darkest place, that so often the tide will turn and the situation begins to improve. When you are walking through the valley and you wonder how much more you can take, how much longer you can walk, something inside of you says, "Don't give up. Keep on hoping." And you keep going. And things get better. The world around you might doubt and criticize you. "Why do you keep going? Why don't you give up?" But something deep inside says, "Don't give up," and you keep going. You might ask yourself, "Am I crazy to believe this will end, that something better will happen? Am I crazy to keep on hoping?" You keep on walking. Then the day comes when you begin to see the light, and the light gets brighter and brighter and everything changes. In the past thirty years of my life, Easter has become the nerve center of hope for me. Before I had the natural hope that every human being has built into us at creation. But the hope I have about life now, about my life and about everybody's life, is connected to the Resurrection experience. I have to admit that until I was in my late twenties or early thirties I did not believe in the Resurrection. How did I deal with Easter as a minister? I was mechanical; I could not get caught up with the reality of a risen body. Then two things happened which changed my mind. First was the disciples' experiences after the Crucifixion. Jesus was dead and in the tomb. The disciples, disheartened, began to disband. The dream seemed to be over. The experience had been a wonderful one, it had been good to be part of it, but it was over. Jesus was dead. Some of them began to go back to their former lives. Then something extraordinary happened in each of their lives which changed them forever. They came alive. The doubts, the confusion, the denials that they had known Jesus, were gone, and they were on fire. They spent the rest of their lives telling the story and spreading the good news of Jesus' Resurrection, and it went like a conflagration throughout the Mediterranean and the Roman Empire. It seems impossible the excitement and conviction they felt would have lasted throughout their lifetimes and centuries beyond, and would have spread through the world and still be spreading, if something remarkable had not happened, if the Resurrection had not been real.  Each of the four gospels tells a different story. In each is the same story of the empty tomb, but the story does not always stress the physical Resurrection, with Jesus appearing to His disciples in the body after His death. The story which got to me most and just turned me around completely was the story in Luke of the walk to Emmaus. It's about two men who were walking the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus, talking with sorrow and despair about the events of the past few days, Jesus' suffering and death. Another man fell in step with them and asked them what they were talking about. "Are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn't know what has happened?" They described how Jesus, who they had hoped would redeem and free Israel, had been crucified, and His body taken from the tomb. As they walked along, the stranger interpreted scripture for them which pertained to the Messiah. They were very interested, but they didn't know who the man was. They invited the stranger to eat with them, and when they were at the table and He blessed the bread and gave it to them, they suddenly understood that their companion was Jesus. As soon as they recognized Him, He disappeared. Over and over, after the Crucifixion, Jesus entered the human scene, just as, ever since, Easter has represented the release of the Christ Spirit into the world. The Christ Spirit has changed my life, and my hope now is not a human hope, but a spiritual, eternal hope. The Easter story has also affected how I feel about angels. For a long time I did not believe in angels, even though both the Christmas story and the Easter story are introduced by them. But I thought they were of another era, and their time had come and gone. Then I was having lunch one day with a woman who was ninety-two years old. Even at such an advanced age she was tremendously alive and, I felt, connected spiritually in deeper ways than I was. During the lunch, in a very natural way, she started talking about her angel. She told me how she had first met her angel when she was eleven years old, and she told many stories about her experiences with the angel during her life and how the intercession of the angel had made a difference, sometimes saving her from great danger. She talked so naturally, and she made it so vivid and real that in that instant, I began to believe in angels. Angels are messengers of God. They represent the Spirit of the Christ. I hope you have come to realize, as I have, that the power of Spirit over circumstance is tremendous. We live in a rational, reasonable world, yet who of us has not experienced something spiritual that we don't understand? It might be an angel. You may be aware of the name Sophie Burnham. Nearly twenty years ago she wrote a book which began to reintroduce the idea of angels into western society. She wrote about how the Easter and Christmas stories are introduced by angels, that angels are messengers from God to us. They come as voices, dreams, visions, nudges, and intuitions. They are that touch on the shoulder which says, "Don't go this way. Go that way." We all have heard those whispers. She goes on to say that angels sometimes come to us as human beings. A total stranger will come up to you and say the words you need. How many times has that happened? Unexpectedly someone says exactly what you need for the moment, and you wonder how they knew. This is the power of Spirit over circumstance. This is the power of the Spirit of the Christ entering the human scene. Sometimes, she says, you act as an angel to somebody else. One day somebody will come to you and say, "You saved my life," and you look astonished, trying to remember ever seeing that person before. "Don't you remember?" they will say. "I was standing on the bridge, staring at the water. You passed by, and you said good morning to me." Has something like that ever happened to you? It has happened to me. This is the way the Spirit works, through angels. Sophie Burnham reminds us that angels always start by saying, "Do not be afraid." You never hear them say, "Boy, are you in trouble. Look what you got yourself into." They will say, "Hush. We are here. We will do what needs to be done." We are always a little different after experiencing an angel. We never forget it. This is the power of the Spirit of Christ, working around and in us. The other day a member of the church told me a little story. She is a women who works as hard as anyone I know. She has a job during the day, at night she tutors children, and on weekends she teaches at a small local college, all to raise money to support her sons' college education. She is a cheerful woman with great energy but, as you can imagine, there are times when she is exhausted and worried. "Arthur," she said on a recent Sunday, "sometimes I get discouraged, and I wonder if God is listening to me. The other day I was praying and I said, ‘God, if You are listening to me show me a penny.' Almost immediately I saw a penny on the sidewalk and I picked it up Ever since then I keep coming across pennies. I bought myself a little bag and put the pennies in it so I will remember." She calls this her "pennies from heaven" bag. I have another Easter story that I hesitate to tell. But we are a story-telling church, and the more we tell stories that are deeply personal to us, the richer the ties between us. Many of you know that a few years ago, I lost my son Chuck. The last years of his life were very difficult. He was disappointed and troubled, almost tortured. His life was not working out. He had started going to a Methodist church in his town in South Caroline, and he befriended the minister. As the minister described it to me after his death, Chuck would sit in the back row, almost as if waiting for God to say something that would connect with him. But it seemed the connection never came. Then, suddenly, he died. After his death, I kept feeling that he had not fully passed over to the other side. He was unhappy and stuck. Then I did something I had never done before. It isn't part of the Protestant tradition—it is a Roman Catholic practice. I started praying for him, every single day. I prayed the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on Chuck. Make haste to help him. Rescue him and save him. Do Your will in his life." Over and over and over again. I did this for more than a year, still feeling that he had not been free to pass over to the other side. Then one day I got a call from a friend who had known him and who is quite intuitive spiritually. "Arthur," she said, "I had a dream about Chuck the other night. He said, ‘Would you call my Dad and tell him I'm all right?'" A few nights later I had a remarkable dream. Chuck had been a ferryboat captain, and all his life he loved and worked around boats. In the dream I saw him sitting in a small lifeboat, the type you see on ocean liners. He was looking straight ahead, very serious, with no animation in his face. The boat was stuck on a mud flat. Then, after a while, I saw the boat gradually begin to pull loose and move ahead  faster and faster. When it got to the deep water it took off and disappeared. I woke up and I felt Chuck had at last passed over to the other side. This was the power of the Spirit involving itself in the human condition, which can happen when we invite the Spirit into our lives and when we are open to its movement and presence. This is the Resurrection of Jesus into our lives. Jesus is with us always, even to the end of the world. God bless you in your journey -- and please know that hope is real, and powerful, and can transform your life. Let us pray. LORD, for the gift of Easter, for the joy and the celebration, and, most of all, for the power of the Christ in our lives, we say thank You. Amen.