Sermon Tone Analysis

One aspect of Easter I enjoy is the relationships, spending time with those around you.

A couple years ago, Kate and I were invited to Easter brunch to someone’s house.

We celebrated in worship with Mosaic that morning and then headed over to brunch.

It appeared that we were the only ones who had gone to church that morning, until I spoke with a friend.

She talked of how great the Easter service was at her church.

There were tons of kids running around in white suspendered shorts and cute hats, there was a beautiful brass accompanied choir, and she said the sermon was really great because there was no mention of Jesus at all.

On Easter Sunday, the best day perhaps to talk about Jesus, this church paid no mention of Christ.

And that was why she believed the Easter message was so great.

This got me thinking, there has to be some contradiction between her perception of who Jesus is and her lived reality.

Is it heretical to ask on Easter Sunday if the things we claim to believe really match the reality of what we live out each week?

Does the Easter story have a place in our lived reality?

Or should it remain either abstract or comfortably forgotten about?

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Text

The Easter story, as told in Mark 16:1-8, goes like this:

“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb? 4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.

5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed…”

Why were they amazed?

Well, they were prepared for death, but found life in the tomb; reality did not match their belief.

And the angel says:

6 “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.

7 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…’”

The angel said, “Don’t be amazed, your perceived reality is not reality.

There is a contradiction between the reality of hope and your belief.

You are looking for Jesus who was crucified; He was dead, but He has risen.

He’s not here, He was, just look at where He was.

It says:

“8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.

They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

They were in initial disbelief and fled.

There was a contradiction between their belief and reality.

Can you relate?

You may believe the good news of Easter, that because of the resurrection we have hope, that Jesus is our hope.

But do these beliefs match our lived reality?

Or do we feel like we’re living in contradiction, where hope is abstract and doesn’t match what we live?

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The Trouble

despairAnd that’s just the trouble, sometimes reality seems to contradict belief or the promises of the faith.

In other words, the trouble is that things often seem and feel hopeless.

Our reality does not seem to match the hope of Easter.

In February, Mosaic and The Table shared Beautify and Blessing Sunday.

One of the projects was to help out a woman named D. D. has had a lot of recent death in her life, and has inherited many of the possessions of the deceased.

She is underprivileged and unemployed, and is going through cancer treatments, which suck her energy.

As a result of these things D. is mostly alone.

Her house is cluttered and she doesn’t have the energy to clean or clear out her place.

The public housing authority in charge of her apartment had scheduled her eviction, because of the untidy, unhealthy, and cluttered nature of her home.

She would be on the street, without support, and without hope.

Loneliness, isolation, no hope of restoration, can you relate, at some level?

Simply put, D. And yet, these promises of deliverance hang in the air, promises of God’s provision, and care, and comfort.

Does that sound familiar?

The realities of life seem to contradict the Easter beliefs we profess.

Our Easter beliefs become stagnate, or at best a far off whisper of hope.

And so we become excited when Jesus is left out of Easter gatherings, because the Easter promises are sterile in our perceived realities.

Things seem hopeless, because hope is not a part of our reality, and we become like D., lying alone in a cluttered apartment, awaiting eviction.

We can empathize with the women in Mark’s gospel, when the hope of Christ is abstract.

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The Point

So what are our options?

What is the role of hope in our faith, and the role of it all in our realities?

We could deny reality, and keep our beliefs, but this would make our faith inauthentic and lead to legalism and compartmentalism.

We could ditch our belief in the Easter promises, and rest on our perceptions, but that would lead to despair and hopelessness and dependence upon things that will never deliver.

What I’ve been contemplating lately is a third, muddy, middle path.

What I’ve been contemplating is a muddied entrance into those perceived contradictions – not a denial of reality, not a ditching of our belief, but an embrace of both, even when it doesn’t make sense.

It’s a reevaluation on the role of hope.

Think of that possibility.

What if your realities were saturated in hope?

What if your faith in the promises of Easter took their lead from hope?

What if we did not accept the paradigms we have of reality, but rather, as Kierkegaard says, lived into “a passion for what is possible”?[1]

Life without hope is hopeless, and Christian faith without hope is stagnant.

John Calvin says that faith must have hope for eternity as its constant companion.

Belief in the promises of God must also possess an expectation that God will deliver on His promises.[2]

So what are these promises of God? Calvin says:

“Faith believes that eternal life has been given to us.

Hope expects that it will one day be revealed.

Faith is the foundation on which hope rests.

Hope nourishes and sustains faith.

For as no man can expect anything from God without previously believing his promises, so, on the other hand, the weakness of our faith, which might grow weary and fall away, must be supported and cherished by patient hope and expectation.

For this reason Paul justly says, ‘We are saved by hope’.”[3]

Hope rests firmly on the person and the work of Christ Himself.

It rests on the reality for us in the resurrection of Easter morning.

So what do WE do about living in contradiction?

This could be just another abstraction of faith.

Where is hope in the midst of our reality?

Where is hope for D., alone in her cluttered apartment?

Where is hope in the midst of our own lives?

Romans 8 says:

“Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us… [and] in hope 21 that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God… [b/c] in this hope we were saved.”

In other words, there is hope within reality.

And, yes, we groan now in our suffering, but we also groan for our adoption out of this suffering and into this glory.

This recognizes that not all things are right.

It recognizes that there are perceived contradictions.

It recognizes that the perfect Easter promises are given to those in imperfect situations.

Calvin, again, says:

“To us is given the promise of eternal life – but to us, the dead.

A blessed resurrection is proclaimed to us – [in the] meantime we are surrounded by decay.

We called righteous – and yet sin lives in us.

We hear [indescribable] blessedness – but [in the] meantime we are here oppressed by infinite misery.

We are promised abundance of all good things – yet we are rich only in hunger and thirst.

[But he asserts,] What would become of us if we did not take our stand on hope, and if our heart did not hasten beyond this world through the midst of the darkness upon the path illumined by the word and Spirit of God?”[4]