Radical Hope

Woman, why are you weeping?

It is not hard to imagine Mary Magdalene’s grief and desolation as she stood by Jesus’ tomb. She was one of the women who stood at the foot of the cross and watched Jesus die a slow painful death. She had been a disciple since the early days of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. History has portrayed her as a sinful woman but there is nothing in the Gospels to support this. Luke’s Gospel tells us that when she met Jesus, she was possessed by seven demons and he cast them out. Jesus was her healer and teacher and she was his devoted disciple. For all the disciples, Jesus’ death was not only the loss of someone they loved deeply and followed, but also the death of their hopes and dreams. The tears Mary Magdalene shed are the tears we shed when we are utterly crushed, when our hearts are broken and we have no hope.

Woman, why are you weeping? We know all too well why she wept. What is harder to imagine is what came next. “They have taken my Lord’s body away,” she says, first to the angels, then to the gardener. “Just tell me where he is and I will carry him away.” And then, she hears her name. “Mary!” And she knows that voice! The voice of the beloved—the voice of the one whom her heart longs for more than anything in the world. When she hears that voice, she knows that it is Jesus standing in front of her. He is the good shepherd who calls his sheep by name, and they know his voice.

When he was saying goodbye to the disciples, Jesus told them, “You will have pain now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” Mary Magdalene was the first to see Jesus again and to experience that joy that no one can take from her. She was the first witness to the resurrection. We know of Jesus’ resurrection through the witness of all those first disciples whose accounts have come down to us in the Gospels. But we also know of his resurrection because he has called each of us by name and we have experienced him as a living presence in our lives.

Perhaps, like Mary Magdalene, we did not recognize him right away. Perhaps we hardly dared hope that God was really alive and active in the world. It is always easier for us to imagine Christ’s death than to trust in his resurrection. We live in a world where life and death, good and evil, blessing and curse are all mixed up together, and so it is easy to fear that death and evil will have the last word.

Nevertheless, we have experienced hope that survives everything. We have experienced that connection to other human beings and to God that even death cannot sever. We have experienced new life and transformation in situations where all seemed lost. Jesus is alive, and we know it, not just because other people have told us it is true, but because we experience his unquenchable life in the deepest recesses of our own hearts.

Jesus is alive and it makes all the difference. We need not fear our own death as annihilation, because Jesus has shown us our future: we are destined for resurrection. But even more significantly, we need not fear that all of human history is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Jesus is alive and so we know that despite the suffering and evil we witness on the face of the earth, all of creation is destined for resurrection. The universe is not random or meaningless or spiraling downward to destruction. God has spoken the word that determines the outcome of history. Even though we are in the midst of this life with its mixture of good and evil, suffering and hope, life and death, we know how the whole drama will end because Jesus has been raised from the dead. The Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, uses the image of a procession—the front of the procession has already reached the end and calls out with cries of triumph that it is all that we hoped it would be. The rest of us are still marching—we may have a long way to go, and we may not be able to see the end—but we have heard the word from the front of the line and nothing can take away our joy.

Jesus is alive, and it makes all the difference. We can put away our fear and live our lives with radical hope, no matter what we experience. Jesus is alive, and so we can look at the heartbreaking war in Iraq and hope for peace, even though we don’t know how it will come about. Jesus is alive, and so we can look at the painful divisions among us—of race and gender, sexual orientation and class—and still have radical hope in a new, reconciled community. Jesus is alive, and we can face the difficult struggles of our lives with an abiding hope because God has already begun to make all things new. No situation, no person is beyond the reach of God’s redeeming love. Things may look hopeless to the rest of the world, but there is hope because Jesus is alive. There is a wonderful story from the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980’s. Members of the movement were having a meeting in a warehouse before it was legal. The police came and surrounded the building and aimed their guns at it. They demanded that they come out. The members stayed in there all night, and they prayed. In the morning they came out, but instead of coming out in fear, with their hands up, they came out singing. The police lowered their weapons and did not arrest them. And Solidarity was ultimately legalized and helped end the repressive regime in Poland. Radical hope created a way when there was no way.

Jesus is alive and at work in the world. He is among us and within us, and calls each of us by name. Through our radical hope, we take part in making all things new—we participate in the resurrection of the whole creation. He is alive and no one can take our joy from us. I want to close with my favorite Easter poem by e.e.cummings.

I thank you God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any—lifted from the no

of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and