The Hope of Easter - Mark 16:1-8
2023 Full School Easter Service Sermon
I wonder, have you ever had those moments in your life when you’ve worked really hard for something, you’ve given your heart and soul into making it happen, only to find that you fall short in the end. You don’t reach your goal and you end up feeling like a bit of a failure.
I’ve had many moments like that in my life, when I’ve worked really hard to achieve something only to fall short of that achievement.
One such event comes to mind, my early studies at University. I worked very hard in Year 12 to get into the Course that I wanted to at Uni. I had my heart set on studying a Bachelor of Ancient History and becoming an archaeologist. I applied myself in Year 12 and got the marks to get me into the Course because I knew so deeply that that was what I wanted.
Yet when I started studying the course it was nothing like what I thought it was going to be. Suddenly, in my first semester of Uni I found myself studying Latin and Ancient Greek at the same time. I’d never been particularly good at languages, and two ancient languages seemed impossible. I tried really hard but I just couldn’t master it. And so, feeling very dejected, I dropped out of Uni. In deferring I felt pretty terrible, I had been convinced this was my career path for life, and in a matter of weeks it had unravelled. I felt like a failure.
Yet it was only years later when I looked back on that time in my life that I realised that that setback was the best thing that could have happened to me. In deferring Uni, I got a job as a part time University Chaplain and also a part time job working in my old school in the Cadet Unit. From that I developed my two passions for ministry and teaching, leading me study both and eventually to the point where I’m standing here today.
What seemed like a failure at the time became a transformative moment of hope in my life; setting me on a far better trajectory that what I could ever have imagined when I sat in that Uni class trying to conjugate verbs in Latin.
The story of Easter gives us an insight into this sense of transformation from failure to hope and provides us with the greatest image of hope for our lives, particularly for those moments when we feel low.
If we put ourselves in the shoes of Jesus’ disciples we can only imagine the deep sense of loss and hopelessness that they would have felt on Good Friday when they saw Jesus dying on the cross. In the reading Hayden read for us we hear the pain and suffering of this moment and the agonising death that Jesus endured. But for his friends watching on, it must have been just as horrible. They had given up their previous lives to follow this man around for three years, they had heard him teach and heal and they believed deeply that this was their Saviour, the Messiah, the one who would bring God’s Kingdom. But as they watched him die on the cross, they would have felt like everything that had worked for had come to nothing. They would have felt as though everything that had wanted had failed. They would have felt hopeless.
Yet it was only two days later, on the first Easter Sunday morning, when some of his friends went to the tomb, that that sense of loss might have begun to be transformed into something new. In the reading Toby read we hear that that they went there only to find Jesus’ body not there and an angel sitting there, telling them the good news that Jesus had been resurrected, he had come back from the dead.
Suddenly that which seemed like the ultimate loss and failure was transformed into the ultimate story of hope and joy.
This is what Easter means for us today. A time of transformation.
From hopeless to hope filled.
At the heart of the Easter story, we have these two symbols of suffering and pain, transformed into symbols of love and joy.
The cross in ancient times was a symbol of the most brutal form of suffering in the Roman Empire, it was a slow and painful death. Yet, in Jesus’ death this symbol is transformed into a symbol of God’s all-encompassing love. Through Jesus’ death on the cross each of us are brought closer to God and we are brought into God’s love and embrace. The cross now stands as a symbol of God’s love and acceptance for all of us, no matter who we are, where we’ve come from, who we love or what we’ve done. None of it matters for God. In Jesus’ death we are all brought into God’s love and the cross stands as a symbol for that.
The tomb was a symbol of the end of Jesus’ life and the end of his teachings. Yet in his resurrection we find hope that nothing is impossible for God. Though Jesus’ resurrection this symbol of death and ending is transformed into a symbol of hope. It shows us that we can always find hope in God, no matter how dire the circumstances seem. When we feel pain or loss or failure, we can look to the empty tomb to remind us of God’s hope. To remind us that nothing is impossible for God and that there is always hope to be found.
It is only in looking back, with a full understanding of the resurrection, that Jesus’ disciples would have been able to see God’s hope. Those things that seemed like a failure was transformed into joy. And it’s the same for us, sometimes when we’re in the midst of difficult situations we might feel dejected, but it’s only when we look back do we see the full picture and find the hope in that moment.
Yet through it all, even when we are in those difficult situations, we have the symbol of the cross and the empty tomb to remind us of God’s hope. That no matter what is happening in our lives God’s hope endures giving us joy and showing us love. May that be the symbols which we hold on to throughout our life’s journey and at this Easter time. Amen.
