Sermon preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church on Sunday, May 1, 2011 for the 2nd Sunday of Easter. Sermon text: 1 Peter 1:3-9. This sermon was the first in an Easter sermon series on the book of 1 Peter called, “Easter Brings Our Hope to Life.”
There’s no funeral. No gravestone. The heart is still beating. The lungs are still breathing. Every physical indication shows signs of life. The body still goes through the motions. But still, there’s been a death. It was the death of hope.
In some ways, the death of hope is sadder than an actual death. When someone physically dies and are buried, at least we can say that there pain in this world is over. But when someone’s hope has died, the pain goes on. The death of hope is a death-sentence to someone who is still alive.
Let me explain what I mean by hope. I don’t mean, “I hope we have nice weather for our picnic today.” I don’t mean, “I hope pastor preaches a short sermon today.” Those are things that might or might not happen, and when we say we “hope” for them, it really means we want them to happen. No, when I say “hope” I mean that expectation we have that God is going to take care of us. It’s not shaky hope or a maybe hope. It’s a sure hope. It’s a hope where we know our God loves us and he’s never going to let us go.
This kind of hope can die. Life gets hard. Troubles weigh us down. Tragedies, injuries, fights, the strains of life, the difficulties of work, the breakdown of our relationships — it can all chip away at the hope in our heart. Sometimes that hope can die gradually. It can squeak away on life-support for years before it goes. Sometimes it’s one heavy blow that kills our hope all at once. A death, an accident, something happens that just doesn’t seem fair. And the hope dies.
That’s one of the reasons I love Easter so much. Easter is about life. Jesus is life. He died, but he is alive forever! The grave couldn’t hold him. Easter is about our life. Because Jesus lives, we will live. By faith in him we will live because he earned it for us, not because we could ever earn anything good from God on our own.
But besides Jesus’ resurrection to life on that first Easter, besides our resurrection to life on the last day, Easter is also about the resurrection of our hope. Yes, Easter brings our hope to life. On Easter it hits us again how great God’s love is for us. On Easter we are knocked over by the fact that nothing could stop our God from rescuing us, not the death of his Son, not his grave, not ours, not anything we face now. Easter brings our hope to life!
We’re going to be focusing on that throughout the rest of this Easter season as we look through the book of 1 Peter. In this letter of Peter, we really see how Jesus’ life gives us hope, a sure hope, a living hope. And while we celebrate that hope and rejoice in it, we also recognize that we live in a sinful world and that the devil wants to take that hope away from us. One of the ways he tries to do that the most is with doubt. Today, we’ll see how Easter brings our hope to life, which means the death of doubt.
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