Saints, life is hard in our present moment. Now, this is not a selfish ploy for sympathy. I mean it is hard for all of us. We are frightened and anxious. We are frustrated and angry. We are fatigued and awash in uncertainty about what awaits. I feel this in my own soul as I read the latest news report or see good friends coming to figurative blows on social media. I hear it in the conversations of which I am a part or which I overhear as I move about the community. I witnessed it boil over in two different school board meetings in the last week.
A sense of hopelessness has descended upon our world and its lifting does not appear imminent. And yet hope is one of the defining virtues of a follower of Christ. I figured I need to feed that hope a bit. So earlier this week, I picked up the latest book by Tim Keller and I am glad I did. I’m only a few pages in but it has already been a help to me.
The book, Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter, was written in the early months of the COVID pandemic. Keller also mentions the social unrest of the previous summer. On top of those greater cultural issues, Keller himself was dealing with the diagnosis of and treatment for pancreatic cancer. Thus, his book is no mere academic treatment of the virtue of hope and its connection with the resurrection of Jesus. Instead, it is the reflections of one desperately looking for the lifeline of hope for himself and for all of us.
In the preface, Keller writes,
Death, pandemics, injustice, social breakdown-we again desperately need a stone of hope. (PJ - The stone Keller references is the stone of Daniel 2 which we studied this past Spring).
And there is no greater hope possible than to believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. Saint Paul says he was “crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power” (2 Corinthians 13:4). If you grasp this great fact of history, then even if you find things going dark, this hope becomes a light for you when all other lights go out. That’s why Paul can add, “Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him.”
He concludes the preface by stating,
Theoretically everyone knows that they could die at any moment. But a diagnosis of cancer or heart disease or the threat of pandemic transfers us into the realm of those who know it as an immediate reality. During a dark time for most of the world, and for me personally, as we all long and grasp for hope, there is no better place to look than the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Saints, the cure for our hopelessness is the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection is not merely a historical past event. It has present power because the power that raised Christ from the dead dwells in us. That is, the Holy Spirit raised Christ from the dead and the same Spirit lives in us. That is why the Apostle Peter writes that in his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope (1 Peter 1:3). Notice what he says. It is a living hope. And where does this living hope spring from? Same verse, Peter says through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
That is why we worship on the first day of the week. In a real sense, every Sunday is Easter Sunday. It is why the weekly gathering of God’s people for worship is essential. Because in that gathering, we come apart from all that drains hope from us and we feed anew on Christ in His word and at His table. Our worship reorients us to all that is true and beautiful and good. So, let us gather this Sunday to feed our hope upon the reality that Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed!
