“Resurrection: Our Living Hope”
(A Sermon for Easter)
Luke 24:1-11 and First Peter 1:3-9 (RSV)
By John Gill ~ April 20, 2025
Many years ago now, I saw a moving video on the Evening News. It was of a small girl dancing for the camera. It ended with a message to her father's captors, begging them to release him. You see, her father was one of the hostages being held captive in Lebanon at the time. He had disappeared from the streets of Beirut only a few months before his daughter was born.
For that little girl, her father existed only in snapshots and stories told to her by her mother and her grandparents. She had never seen her father face to face, but through those who had seen him, she knew what kind of a man he was: how he loved life, cared about his family, and most of all loved his little girl. To that little girl, her father was a stranger. But really, not a stranger at all! In reality, there existed a special bond between them: he was dear to her, although she had never laid eyes on him. Not ever having seen him, she still loved him!
This was the situation of those to whom Peter wrote his letter. Much like this little girl, the members of that congregation were all second-generation Christians. They never saw Jesus personally. They were not as privileged as Peter, who had been with Jesus during his ministry and had witnessed Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances. They received all their information about Jesus second hand - from Peter and the other Apostles.
That's all those second-generation Christians had to go on - the testimony of others. That's all they had - but that was enough. It was enough to convince many to follow Christ, and even to face persecution for his sake. Peter was aware of their outstanding faith, and so he praised them with these words: “Without having seen him, you love him, although you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice.”
And, isn't that also our situation this Easter morning? You and I have not seen Christ with our physical eyes, as Peter had; nor have we heard his voice with our physical ears, as had Mary Magdalene on Easter morning. Unlike Thomas, we have not touched the nail-prints in his hands or his wounded side. Just like those in the early church, our information about Jesus is second-hand!
What's more, we are not second or third generation Christians, but maybe the 100th generation over the past 2000 years! Like those second-generation Christians, you and I have not seen Christ: we didn't see him die on the cross, nor did we observe the empty tomb. All we know about Jesus has come to us second hand – “hearsay!” Yet, like those early Christians, you and I are expected to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, and - to devote our lives to him!
I think the central question confronting everyone throughout history, and especially on this Easter Sunday, isthis: “How can I believe in a risen Christ - sight unseen?” That question will continue to haunt us, until we answer it in our own souls. “How is it that we can love Jesus, even though we have never laid eyes on him?”
You know, many people try to believe in Jesus based on the impact he has made on our world. It is true: no one person has had more influence on the development of humanity than Jesus Christ. Can you even imagine what our world would be like if Jesus had never lived? It is impossible to envision! So much of what is “good” in our world can be traced back to this itinerant preacher in Galilee.
I'm sure you're familiar with the poem “One Solitary Life.” Written by James Allan Francis, a Baptist pastor, and preached as part of a sermon in 1926,1 this is how Jesus is described:
“…Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today he is the center of the human race and the leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that were ever built, and all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon the earth as powerfully as has this one solitary life.”1
What an enormous influence one man has had - through his followers’ good works: building churches, hospitals, children's homes, schools, helping the poor, fighting injustice, and so forth. Our world is a much better place because Jesus was here. Even non-Christians will agree with that statement.
But many who look at the impact of Christ on our world try to base their faith on that alone. They see Jesus only as a good and noble man, whose moral teachings are worth following. Maybe that's how you feel. But is that enough to cause us to love and serve him sight-unseen, to follow him wherever he leads, even to suffer persecution for his sake? It wouldn't be enough for me!
There is only one thing which can call-forth such devotion, to believe in and serve Jesus sight-unseen. That is - when we experience the impact that Christ has made, not on our world, - but the impact he can make on our personal lives.
Friend, that is what Easter is all about! The power of the resurrection only has meaning when it is experienced within the heart of each man, woman, boy, or girl. As we will sing in just a few moments, “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart!” This is what Peter meant when he wrote that “we are born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” - a hope that comes to us personally.
Phillips Brooks wrote these words: “The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death - that is not the great thing - but that we are to live here and now by the power of the resurrection.”2 Those who see only the impact of Jesus on history can never understand the power and mystery of the resurrection. For them, Easter is only an illusion. For them, there is no living hope.
Thomas Jefferson was, in many ways, a great man. An American patriot, of course. He was also a scientific thinker with a brilliant rational mind. Therefore, Jefferson could never accept the miraculous parts of the Bible. He edited his own special version of scripture he entitled, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. In his “Bible,” Jefferson omitted all references to the supernatural. When editing the text of the Gospels, he only included Jesus’ moral teachings. The closing words of Jefferson’s “Bible” are these: "Now, in the place where He was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed." 3
Period. No resurrection, no empty tomb, - no “living hope!”
Thank God that's not the way our Bible ends! If Jefferson had experienced the resurrection in his heart, his Bible wouldn't have ended there, either.
There’s a story of a man who had never heard music before—he had been deaf from birth. One day, after receiving cochlear implants, the doctors turned on the device. For the first time, he heard sound.
At first, he was overwhelmed—every noise was new. But then someone played a song. He stopped. Tears filled his eyes. “What is that?” he asked. They told him: “That’s music.”
He had read about music. He had seen people dance to it. He had even studied it. But now—he was experiencing it. It wasn’t theory anymore. It was real. And it changed him forever.4
That’s what happens when we truly encounter the risen Jesus—not just in history, not just in theology, but in our hearts. You can know all about the resurrection; you can grow up in the church and quote verses until you are blue in the face —but when Jesus makes Himself real to you, when the power of His resurrection moves inside your soul, you finally understand what life was meant to be. It’s like hearing music for the first time.
It’s just as Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn, “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” – “Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb, your loosened tongues employ; ye blind, behold your Savior come, and leap, ye lame, for joy!”5
Do you know that kind of exuberance on this Resurrection Sunday? I hope so!
You see, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead just so we could celebrate a holiday. He rose, so He could live - in us; to breathe new life into us, to give us a joy that causes us to leap and dance, and to fill us with a hope that sings in our hearts.
So, on this Easter morning, what is your response to that “one central question” we all must answer: “Can you believe in a risen Christ, sight-unseen?”
The only way you can - is through the eyes of faith - to open your heart to the power of Christ, so that you might be “born anew to a living hope…” A living hope… through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
As Peter wrote: “Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. As the outcome of your faith, you obtain the salvation of your souls.”
Friends, that is what Easter is all about.
© 2025 by John B. Gill, III
1 https://www.celebratingholidays.com/?page_id=4456#:~:text=Francis%20published%20it%20that%20same,121.
2 https://www.biblestudytools.com/pastor-resources/illustrations/easter-11543465.html
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
4 ChatGPT
5 Wesley, Charles. O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing (1739). United Methodist Hymn, No. 57
2