1 Peter 1: 3-9
The fact is that after Jesus’ death the disciples had no joy because they had absolutely no hope. There are several things that are strangely absent in the resurrection accounts, apart from the body of Jesus that is!
A Pastoral Letter
Dear family,
So wonderful to have a packed and joyful house on Easter Sunday morning! However, the fact is that after Jesus’ death the disciples had no joy because they had absolutely no hope. There are several things that are strangely absent in the resurrection accounts, apart from the body of Jesus that is! Not a single disciple was assuring anybody that Jesus was coming back. No one was telling the others to cheer up and keep their chin up, because He would be dropping in for a cup of tea any time soon. It was not even a possibility. However, it is not that they had not been told. No one was suddenly remembering and recalling what Jesus had predicted about His death and resurrection on the third day, even though it was repeated by Him on several occasions, some of them a little out of the ordinary, that you would have thought and assumed would be memorable (Peter’s confession of Jesus’ Messiahship, the Transfiguration, the arrival at Jerusalem for the last time). How many times do you have to hear the prediction of “three days” and it not register? That was a very specific clue, yet after the crucifixion, not one of the disciples said, “Let’s at least give it three days. It can’t hurt. We’ll know soon enough.” However, if Jesus’ friends forgot, His enemies were not so unknowing about this. The next day, after the burial in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, the Chief Priests and Pharisees went to Pilate and said: “We remember that while He was still alive, that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day.” Give the disciples lack of understanding, lack of awareness, lack of expectation – given their fundamental lack of any hope at all – what now follows would be almost amusing if it were not so sad. “Otherwise His disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people He has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.” They had absolutely nothing to fear. Trying to validate a ‘raised in three days’ hope was not on their radar. In a back-handed way this puts paid to any accusation of deception. They had no reason to deceive if they had no reason to believe. They had no hope.
So, no one saying Jesus would be coming back, nor were there any conversations about where Jesus might be. There are no thoughts presented, either about their future or that of Jesus. There is no mention of heaven or even any hope expressed about the resurrection of the dead. The resurrection was not on their hope list. It was not even on their “wouldn’t it be great if” list. It is interesting that Peter who left the tomb wondering what it was all about, not understanding that Jesus had to rise from the dead, became known as the ‘apostle of hope’. Thirty years later he writes: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). His audience were living in an antagonistic anti-Christian culture that was threatening, reviling and abusive. Things were about to get physical in the persecution stakes. Peter reminds them that their new birth brought them into a living hope that not only had power to help them endure the present, but to assure them of their future inheritance, their blessed hope that could not be destroyed (because invulnerable to death), not be defiled (because not April 23, 2019 tainted by evil) and not be diminished (because unaffected by passing time or present suffering). The verity, the validity, the verifiability, the vindication of this hope was absolutely certified by the resurrection of Jesus that vouched for the certainty of all His promises and His claims.
We looked at five different ways the hopelessness expressed itself through the different characters in the narrative. There was the hopelessness of: disappointment (Cleopas and friend Luke 24:13-33); of dread (the disciples John 20:19-23); of doubt (Thomas John 20:24- 29); of despair (Mary John 20:10-18); of denial (Peter Matthew 26:72). In every case, it took a personal encounter with the risen Christ for them to be born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Because the resurrection established our future hope, it is hope that becomes a key descriptor in the New Testament of our Christian life. The certainty of the resurrection assures us of the certainty of what is to come. When we talk about ‘the faith’, what we believe, we could just as well talk about ‘the hope’. Hope equally becomes a synonym for Christian belief. It captures in a word the summary of what we believe and who we are and where we are going. Hope is not just one of many interesting Christian subjects, nor is it just one of many Christian virtues. Rather, it is at the heart and core of what everything we believe in is about: “hope of salvation … the hope that we have … the hope of eternal life … the confession of our hope … the one hope to which we were called” (Colossians 1:23; 1 Thessalonians 5:8; 1 Peter 3:15; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 10:23; Ephesians 4:4). This is why Peter, first into the tomb, described his consequent revelation and experience as a “new birth into a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). We have noted that an early euphemism for being a Christian was simply “to hope in Christ” (Ephesians 1:12) and that our Christian testimony can be described as the “confession of our hope” (Hebrews 10:23). Because the resurrection is the premise and the proof of our hope we can boldly say: “in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:24). Repeating the teaching of the New Testament, the resurrection is our gospel of hope; it is the ground of our hope; it is the guarantee of our hope; it is the goal of our hope because we too shall be raised; it is the goad of our hope because it provokes us to holiness in our preparation of what is yet to come.
Who has more authority than Peter to remind us that our hopelessness is equally redeemable, that our hope is equally sure because of the resurrection of Jesus. A few verses later he wrote: “Hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus is revealed” (1 Peter 1;13). Both our present and future hope have been secured by the resurrection. Jesus is still in the living business of living hope, not leaving us desolate in our sin and hopelessness, but bringing His risen forgiving power to bear on our sin, bringing His healing and delivering power to bear on our dread and our doubt, our despair and our disappointment, but especially our denials, and incorporate us, either again, or for the very first time, into a resurrection community that we call the body of Christ, the church. Indeed, He is Christ our present hope, and Christ the hope of glory. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
Hope-fully yours,
Stuart