Optimism is True: I Believe in the Resurrection

The brutality of Good Friday came as a shock to most of Jesus’ closest followers. It seemed He had come to offer a new way of life - with love and hope. But it then He was arrested, tortured and killed. “So, that’s it, then,” they must have thought. “It ends like this. It’s over.” They spent three years following this One, for Whom they left everything. They became homeless wanderers, traveling from village to village to preach and heal under Jesus’ guidance. And now it was over. They scattered separately and later came back to the upper room. “What now?” “Where will we go?” I read the accounts of it and the hopeless places of my heart chimed in with every failure of my life: “It’s over. It was never going to work out. I guess I was wrong. I wasted my time.” But reading the account of the empty tomb in advance of tonight’s Easter Vigil service, I am confronted with a truth that sounds almost too good to be true: assured victory, death conquered, optimism as truth, love will always win. As often as I have pessimistically thought, “Anything that can go wrong will,” or “This is going to turn out badly,” or “I’ll never get it right,” Jesus turns that on its head by rising just as He said He would. I am challenged to believe, not just in death, but in the resurrection. Jesus accepted death and was hidden for a moment, but the One who is life cannot actually stay dead. He has won. And by virtue of our faith, we will win with Him.