If you saw him, you would know something was desperately wrong. You know the type. The loner off in the corner of the room. Feeling unworthy of being in the presence of anyone. Shame working its way from the inside out, turning the body in twisting isolation. He had done something he promised he would never do, to his best and dearest friend no less. He completely disconnected himself from him, denying his friendship and even knowing who his friend was. He felt like there was no coming back from that. His friend was dead, no chance to say sorry, no hope for forgiveness, but that final look in his friend’s eyes haunting him every time he closed his eyes. He found himself facedown in hopelessness, drowning and dissociating. This story is not made up. It’s flesh and blood real. It’s Peter. Peter was a passionate disciple of Jesus. He loved his Lord more than anything in the world, which is why when he denied Jesus, it broke him. As he looked at his life, he couldn’t see a future, the question plaguing him, “How could hope be alive?”
Have you found yourself in that same aloneness? You’re looking at your future, and it seems dark, confusing, maybe even hopeless? You’re certainly not alone. Our modern American culture exists in an age of hopelessness. Taking our cue from the post-modern thoughts of philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre, who wrote in an essay once, “Humanity is a useless passion.” Whatever hope we hold to, so often comes undone. Suffering screams to us, “Life is meaningless. Just look at the senseless carnage.” We tap the articles showing a concert hall in rubble, the bridge in the river, and the terrified faces of people running from an active shooter, if life has hope, where is it? Is there a more important question? As human beings, we can’t live without hope. You know this all too well, because hopelessness is not just out there, it’s in your home too, isn’t it? How can its whispers not be? I’ve heard them too. I heard them as I stood with a mom, her baby struggling to breathe as he battles sickness, the 93-year-old woman who lost her husband of 70 years, tears streaming months later as she stares at his once favorite recliner, still not knowing how to go on, the teen trying to hide the scars on his wrists, but that painful question hits him again, “Will someone ever really love me?” This is what Satan has long done. He is a kleptomaniac for hope, wanting to steal every bit of it from your life. It’s this nihilistic time we live in, that everything is meaningless in the end because death will take it all from you. Lasting hope? Living hope? Come on, it’s a fairy tale or so we’re told. But as Albert Camus once wrote, “A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.” Is that you? Beneath the smile you force yourself to have?
That’s where Peter was. He thought his future was no more. A two-ton boulder of shame pausing him from moving on, but then a story shattered that narrative. A few women run out to the tomb of their dear Teacher, Peter’s best friend, Jesus. One of these women very well likely being Jesus’ own mother. They rush there as the sun begins to peak over the horizon, but what they find floods them with a light this world cannot compare to. Their worries about who would roll away the stone, dashed, by an angel. As they stand in stunned silence, he speaks to their hopelessness, “Don’t be alarmed! You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” Everything about this is radical. For women to be the first witnesses of the greatest act of hope in world history, when in their culture they couldn’t even be witnesses in court? Now, given the task to share the only hope that breaks the darkness all around us. They trembled. How could they not? Jesus rising from the dead? Death isn’t the end? Could this really be true? And then the cryptic ending, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” Maybe you’re wondering, how could they be afraid to share this news? Because they knew it would change everything, especially for the one person the angel mentions by name for them to share this with: Jesus’ disciples and….? Peter.
These women had to grapple with a new reality. If Jesus lives, what then? What does this mean? It went against everything that seemed natural, and yet it resonated at a depth they’d never felt. After all in the real world, you have to be okay with losing people for good, but are we as people okay with that? Or is there something in you that refuses to believe such hopelessness? Why is it that death always seems so unnatural even as we speak of dying of “natural causes”? Why does it seem like an intrusion into how life should be? The Western cultural life motto: Try to grab on to the few days you have, make them meaningful before things and you fall apart. But is that enough for you? Is that all life is?
Peter was in the same place. Trying to tell himself, “Just try to do the next right thing and move on.” Jesus knew this was where Peter’s heart was. It’s this beauty of what Jesus told that angel to say, “Go tell his disciples…and Peter.” Jesus was going to invade the dark place Peter was in. He would see him again. In Galilee. No doubt. He would be waiting for Peter and when Jesus says he’ll be there he will. He wouldn’t ghost him. He is no false hope. He is certainty himself. He is the very story of hope, or as Christopher Watkin puts it, “Jesus is the underlying reality to which all stories point.” But again, do you find some part of you still thinking, “Can such hope be real? Can a story like this really be true?”
This is where I will challenge you with a question, have we lost our story? Why are dystopian novels, tragic movie endings the norm in our culture? Why is the happy ending, a story ending in lasting hope, “happily every afters” called trite, childish, and dismissive of reality? It has to do with hope. We as people cannot live without hope which makes it life or death where you place your hope. The good news for you is that you have a God who gave his life for you, who suffered death for you, and rose again so you could dare to hope, dare to smile, dare to stand against the raging rivers of our culture, dare to stand firm against the tragic pull of death, because Jesus has given you a hope that is ever and always alive.
Peter experienced that just where Jesus said he would, in Galilee. Some days had passed since the women had first told Peter what the angel said. Peter had seen the tomb himself. He had even seen Jesus. But hopeless he remained. “Why would Jesus want me back?” He tried to lose himself in his old profession, fishing, rejecting any notion Jesus would want anything to do with him again. But then as he threw out his net that morning, he looked to the shore, and he saw Jesus. His Jesus waiting for him just like he said. He runs out of the boat, swimming like he has never swum before, and after Jesus makes them breakfast, he does the impossible, or so Peter thought, he forgave him. Personally, fully, forever. But he’s not done. Hope is alive remember, constantly moving, always giving purpose, and he looks at Peter with a smile that bursts with a joy that goes beyond the walls of this world and says, “Follow me!” Jesus is saying, “Peter, you have a future, and not just any future, but one with me at your side all the way through.”
If at this point you’re asking the question, “What does this story have to do with me?” I beg you, can’t you see it? I know all too deeply how hard it is to face the struggle. It’s hard to have hope in this madness we call life because we’re tempted to think this broken world is the only world we will ever know. But if Jesus is risen, and he is, then your future is so much more beautiful and meaningful than you could ever imagine, and this is no mere fiction, this is certainty. It’s looking into the eyes of your Jesus who saw through the darkness of death, blinding it with his light that you see what his hope for you means. Do you know what it means for you emotionally? For those moments only you and Jesus know about. The darkness you’ve never wanted anyone to see. Those questions, “Am I significant? Does my life mean anything? How can I move on?” Because Jesus lives, he brings hope in that pit. You know you’re significant because Jesus gave his all and rose again…for you, the treasure you are to him revealing a love that melts away any doubt of how Jesus sees you. Your life doesn’t just mean something, it has been written into the very story of the universe, you have a purpose that goes beyond even the grave, loving your Savior with everything you are and have. You move forward through every loss and storm, because you know behind the clouds remains the blinding Son of God who scatters the darkness and fills you with hope again.
Do you know what the resurrection means for you physically? For those moments you look at the mirror and see all the imperfections, the aging, the scars? You remember his scarred hands, scars he chose to keep in his glorified body, to remind him not only of the cross, but of you. Because Jesus IS risen, you know one day you will be too. One day you won’t need make-up to hide your flaws, no more aches when you get up from your chair, no more disabilities or pain, but a body like Jesus, perfect, glorified, flawless.
Do you know what the resurrection means for your relationships? It means those dear ones you used to pray with, worship with, sing praises with, but had to watch be lowered into the ground, will be given back to you. When Jesus releases you from that heavenly hug that awaits you, and you run into their waiting arms again. This hope, so alive that not even death can remove its joy. For you dear Christian, you have a hope that goodbye cannot speak to, that death cannot end, and that grief cannot snuff out.
Does such hope scare you in a way? This hope to die for? Is there that part of you that wants to believe this, but you know if you do it changes everything? Much like those women at the tomb, much like Peter on the beach? What about you? Where does this leave you? Here is where. To live in the always-alive hope of Jesus means there’s restoration for all you’ve lost, that everything that’s been taken from you will be returned more perfect than you ever thought possible. This alive hope of Jesus means there’s forever significance to every bit of your suffering, that there is another glorious morning to come when everything sad will come untrue, when life will return to its full majesty, and death sent to the eternal shadows, when your Jesus returns for you just like he told you he would, your name forever written on the scars remaining on his hands and feet, and he takes you to the home of hope, where death, goodbyes, hopelessness are no more. Their funeral is done, but for you, dear child of God, a lifetime without end. Hope alive, never to be taken from you again, as the ancient hymn says, “Christ will end all sadness.” It’s your story. Believe it. It’s all true just as he told you. Amen.
