Untethered Hope (Mark 16:1-8)

Below is my Easter sermon, preached on March 31, 2024, at Messiah Lutheran Church in Park Ridge.

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It is good to be here with you today, my friends. You know, a Lutheran understanding of worship and the liturgy is that every Sunday is a mini Easter celebration. Think about the movements and activities we do here in worship: We are joined to Christ in his death and resurrection when we remember our Baptism. We encounter the embodied and risen Christ in the bread and wine at the communion table. We are enlivened by the Word made flesh in the proclamation of good news. And we depart from here, each week, transformed by the Spirit and sent out into the world as the body of Christ. 

Every week is a mini Easter celebration. Christ’s resurrection is why we gather, whether it’s today, or a snowy, frozen morning in February, or a beautiful summer day in June. Christ’s resurrection is why we gather. 

But don’t get me wrong, there is still something extraordinary about this day... about Easter Sunday. In a way, it’s like a wedding anniversary. Of course, in a good marriage, you live a life of love and trust and respect and partnership all year long, it’s not something realized or celebrated on just one day alone. But on your wedding anniversary, you take time to pause, reflect, and marvel at the gift of your partner in your life. Maybe you get dressed up a little bit. Maybe you go out somewhere special. Maybe you hug one another a little bit tighter as you remember why you fell in love in the first place. 

Easter is that day in the church year. It’s the day we mark and remember why we gather together at all. The day we remember why we believe, and why we orient our lives, our trust, and our hope toward a man who lived more than two thousand years ago. 

You know, I wonder... how would you answer that question this morning? Why do you believe? What difference does it make in your life that today the tomb is empty and Jesus is alive? Why do you believe? 

I spent a lot of my own time thinking about that question during this past week. Why do I believe? 

Now, most of you already know this, but Easter Sunday for pastors is a bit like April 15th, tax day, for accountants. It’s a day we circle on our calendar knowing that our lives will be pretty busy in the days and weeks prior. We work hard all year, of course, but this is our busy season, for both pastors and accountants. This isn’t the time of year to ask either of us to help you move a couch, or drop you off at the airport. The only difference is that an accountant is free to say no to such requests without the crushing guilt a pastor might feel. I’ll still take a pastor’s busy season over an accountant’s though, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. 

I mention this because, during this very busy week for me, as I tried to find time to plan extra services and reflect on my Easter question, why do I believe, I was forced to stop everything on Tuesday and take a day away for my health. 

For those who don’t know, I have multiple sclerosis, and my treatment requires pretty regular trips to Northwestern Hospital down in Streeterville, in the city. This week, on Tuesday, I had both an MRI and a regular monthly infusion. In both cases, there’s really nothing I can do about the schedule. It is what it is, and I can’t just say, "Well, it’s Holy Week. I have to put my treatment on hold for now because I just have too much other stuff to do. I’ll pass." That’s not really an option on the table for me, at least as long as I want to avoid the consequences of pausing my treatment. 

And so as I was lying captive in the MRI early Tuesday morning, with my eyes clenched shut, thinking about how I might articulate why I believe in the miracle of Easter and the good news of the gospel, a thought crossed my mind. It was just a glimmer, a flicker of a thought in between the clicks and clacks of the loud machine. But it stuck with me as I moved two floors up to the infusion center where it percolated even more as I sat, tethered to an IV for the rest of the morning.  

After much thought, I finally found the words on my train ride home. This disease, this experience of living a life with MS, has dramatically influenced my understanding of hope. Because those of us with MS live completely without the hope of healing. There is no cure for MS, and there is no drug that reverses disease progression, nor is there any real promising new research on the horizon.

The best we can hope, the best I can hope for is a treatment that slows disease progression. Fewer relapses. More time. It’s not terrible… it’s better than nothing. But it’s not a wild and exciting hope that enlivens and inspires one to dream big. 

So much of my life now is oriented toward that reduced and limited version of hope -- infusions every four weeks, MRIs and doctor's appointments every few months, and daily exercise all moving with hope toward the best possible news available to me as a person with MS: no new disease progression. No new symptoms. I can still walk. I can still see. And that’s what hope is limited to for a person living with MS.

But unfortunately, the reality of MS is that progression is inevitable. It's just a matter of time. One of these days, one of these MRIs, one of these appointments will end with bad news. The hope I reach for each morning, each treatment, each cycle of doctor appointments is dimly lit. It's not a hope for healing and wholeness, but merely a hope for stability. A hope for no new symptoms. It's a hope for no bad news instead of a hope for good news.

Now this reality is obviously very specific to me and my health, I know. However, I think today we all live in a world where folks are tethered to their own similarly dimly lit, uncomfortable, unsatisfying hopes. 

We see it all around us, don’t we? In Gaza, the hope of so many is reduced to nothing more than simply food, water, and an end to this historic, unconscionable, violence. Not justice, not restoration, just another day. Just another meal.

For all humans conscious and aware of what is happening with the climate, the news of historic seawater temperature rises, eroding coastlines, and mid-triple-digit temperatures terrify and discourage us. The hope for us all is that even small parts of the planet may remain livable for our great-grandchildren. Not abundant living, but simply survival. 

Here in the States, we see it in our attitudes toward the upcoming election too. I don’t know about you, but my hope for this November has been reduced to the simple survival of democracy, and the avoidance of bloodshed. 

For so many lonely and grieving souls, hope has been reduced to nothing more than a smile from a friendly stranger, a kind word from a friend, or just a moment’s escape from the pain of their existence. Not belovedness, but simply acknowledgment. 

We are all in desperate need of a hope that transcends the reality of this broken world. A hope that is untethered from the limited expectations and restricted imagination of a world that says abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Untethered from a hope that says no bad news is as good as we are ever going to get.

Even the women on the way to the tomb were tethered to this kind of limited, dimly lit hope. Despite all that Jesus had promised, the women walked to the tomb on Easter morning with no expectations of encountering the risen Lord. In fact, they went to the tomb with only the hope that someone would be able to help them roll away the stone so that they could anoint Jesus’ body. No hope for resurrection, just access to the body. Nevermind the men, who couldn’t even muster up the hope to visit the tomb at all!

All of us, from the women who showed up at the tomb, to those gathered here at Messiah this morning, all of us are tethered to a reality that tells us there is no grand hope for healing, love, restoration, and justice. There is no possible way to beat back the pain and suffering and inevitability of violence, destruction, death and dying. We are all tied to this depressing and bleak worldview. It is the air we breathe and in the water we swim. It is the infusion pump we drag around behind us.

And yet. And yet. On Easter morning, we find a young man dressed in white, sitting in the tomb where Jesus should be. We are rocked with the impossible truth that Jesus is not there, that death could not defeat the love of God, that resurrection is not just possible, but assured, that God’s promises are true, and that new life springs up from death. 

This hope is not a dimly lit flickering hope that you can barely see… this is not a hope born out of concession or one that you must convince yourself is worthwhile. This is not the bare minimum, nor is it simply the best we can hope for, the best of a bad situation. This is actual, real good news. 

And not just good news. This is the promise of new life for the dying, the assurance of wholeness for the broken and healing for the sick. This is the promise of justice for the marginalized and freedom for the captives. It is the unbelievable, impossible, grandest hope you can imagine. It is the doors flung wide on what’s possible and what’s true. It is God’s great love for you breaking into the world. 

It is a gift. It is God snipping the cord, releasing the tether, or removing the IV. On this day, we are freed from whatever prevents us from embracing this wild and unbridled hope for ourselves and for this world. 

And that is why Easter matters. That is why I believe. Because I choose to trust in the one who promises a wild and inspiring vision of new life, both beyond the grave and right here among us today. I choose to trust in the one who promises healing and wholeness, abundant love and abundant life. Not just for me but for you, and for all of creation and everything it. 

On Easter we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, the defeat of death and the grave, and the freedom that such an act of love enables. The tomb is empty, and Jesus has gone out ahead of you. Wherever you go now. Whatever you face. You can be assured that the resurrected Christ is there before you. 

Christ is risen. You are freed from the ties that bind you to the dimly lit hopes of this world. Go now and live abundantly with the hope of new life, the hope of forgiveness, the hope of restoration, and the assurance of resurrection. Amen.