April 19th, 2022 by Dave Leave a reply »

A Feast of Hope

In a homily offered on Easter Sunday 2019, Father Richard Rohr shared the good news of the resurrection: 

The Brazilian writer and journalist Fernando Sabino (1923–2004) wrote, “In the end, everything will be [all right]. If it’s not [all right], it’s not the end.” [1] That’s what today is all about, “Everything will be okay in the end.”

The message of Easter is not primarily a message about Jesus’ body, although we’ve been trained to limit it to this one-time “miracle.” We’ve been educated to expect a lone, risen Jesus saying, “I rose from the dead; look at me!” I’m afraid that’s why many people, even Christians, don’t really seem to get too excited about Easter. If the message doesn’t somehow include us, humans don’t tend to be that interested in theology. Let me share what I think the real message is: Every message about Jesus is a message about all of us, about humanity. Sadly, the Western church that most of us were raised in emphasized the individual resurrection of Jesus. It was a miracle that we could neither prove nor experience, but that we just dared to boldly believe.

But there’s a great secret, at least for Western Christians, hidden in the other half of the universal church. In the Eastern Orthodox Church—in places like Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Egypt—Easter is not usually painted with a solitary Jesus rising from the dead. He’s always surrounded by crowds of people—both haloed and unhaloed. In fact, in traditional icons, he’s pulling people out of Hades. Hades is not the same as hell, although we put the two words together, and so we grew up reciting in the creed that “Jesus descended into hell.”

Instead, Hades is simply the place of the dead. There’s no punishment or judgment involved. It’s just where a soul waits for God. But we neglected that interpretation. So the Eastern Church was probably much closer to the truth that the resurrection is a message about humanity. It’s a message about history. It’s a corporate message, and it includes you and me and everyone else. If that isn’t true, it’s no wonder that we basically lost interest.

Today is the feast of hope, direction, purpose, meaning, and community. We’re all in this together. The cynicism and negativity that our country and many other countries have descended into show a clear example of what happens when people do not have hope. If it’s all hopeless, we individually lose hope too. Easter is an announcement of a common hope. When we sing in the Easter hymn that Christ destroyed death, that means the death of all of us. It’s not just about Jesus; it’s to humanity that God promises, “Life is not ended, it merely changes,” as we say in the funeral liturgy. That’s what happened in Jesus, and that’s what will happen in us. In the end, everything will be all right. History is set on an inherently positive and hopeful tangent.

Universal Restoration

Father Richard writes about the early church’s belief in universal restoration and the eventual victory of Divine Love:

A number of Church Fathers during the first four centuries of Christianity believed in what’s called apokatastasis, or“universal restoration” (Acts 3:21). [1] They believed that the real meaning of Christ’s resurrection was that God’s love was so perfect and so victorious that it would finally triumph in every single person’s life. They were so sure about this that their thought partially gave rise to the idea of purgatory as a place. In the dying process or even after death, God’s infinite love can and will still get at us! They felt no soul could resist the revelation of such infinite love. (Most Catholics were never taught that the original folk belief in purgatory represented an overwhelming sense of God’s always-victorious love and mercy. Like many great mysteries, it deteriorated into its exact opposite, a place of punishment—which is all a worldview of scarcity can devise.)

From my reading of the history of the Catholic Church and its dogma, universal restorationwas never condemned as heretical. We didn’t have to believe in it, but we certainly could. Isn’t it interesting that we Catholics canonize saints, pronouncing them to be in heaven beyond a shadow of a doubt, yet this same Church has never declared that a single person is in hell or purgatory, not even Judas or Hitler? The Church might just be holding out for a possible universal restoration.

The true meaning of the raising of Jesus is that God will turn all our human crucifixions into resurrection. This is a social, historical victory for God. Part of why we could not accept it is that we want individual people to “get their due.” But the real biblical message is that God is loving history much more than only loving individuals. This should have been apparent from YHWH’s relationship with Israel which was always corporate, both in its covenants and in its chastisements. We are all in this together, biblically speaking.

In her thirteenth showing, Julian of Norwich (1343–c. 1416) asked Jesus, “In fear and trembling, ‘Oh, good Lord, how can all be well when great harm has come to your creatures through sin?’ And here I wanted, if I dared, to have some clearer explanation to put my mind at rest.” And to this our blessed Lord . . . taught me . . . ‘Since I have brought good out of the worst-ever evil, I want you to know, by this, that I shall bring good out of all lesser evils, too.’” [2]

Could God’s love really be that great and that universal? I believe it is. Love is the lesson, and God’s love is so great that God will finally teach it to all of us. We’ll finally surrender, and God will win in the end. That will be God’s “justice,” which will swallow up our lesser versions. God—Love—does not lose!

The Invincibility of God’s Love

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931–2021) shares a hopeful vision for the transformation of all death into new life, all evil into good. 

Dear Child of God, it is often difficult for us to recognize the presence of God in our lives and in our world. In the clamor of the tragedy that fills the headlines we forget about the majesty that is present all around us. We feel vulnerable and often helpless. . . . But we are not helpless and with God’s love we are ultimately invincible. Our God does not forget those who are suffering and oppressed. 

Tutu shares an experience he had when gathered with other church leaders during the most difficult days of apartheid:

We met at a theological college that had closed down because of the government’s racist policies. During our discussions I went into the priory garden for some quiet. There was a huge Calvary—a large wooden cross without a corpus, but with protruding nails and crown of thorns. It was a stark symbol of the Christian faith. It was winter: the grass was pale and dry and nobody would have believed that in a few weeks’ time it would be lush and green and beautiful again. It would be transfigured.  

As I sat quietly in the garden I realized the power of transfiguration—of God’s transformation—in our world. The principle of transfiguration [Richard: very similar to how I describe resurrection] is at work when something so unlikely as the brown grass that covers our veld in winter becomes bright green again. Or when the tree with gnarled leafless branches bursts forth with the sap flowing so that the birds sit chirping in the leafy branches. Or when the once dry streams gurgle with swift-flowing water. When winter gives way to spring and nature seems to experience its own resurrection.  

The principle of transfiguration says nothing, no one and no situation, is “untransfigurable,” that the whole of creation, nature, waits expectantly for its transfiguration, when it will be released from its bondage and share in the glorious liberty of the children of God, when it will not be just dry inert matter but will be translucent with divine glory. . . .

All over this magnificent world God calls us to extend [God’s] kingdom of shalom—peace and wholeness—of justice, of goodness, of compassion, of caring, of sharing, of laughter, of joy, and of reconciliation. God is transfiguring the world right this very moment through us because God believes in us and because God loves us. What can separate us from the love of God? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And as we share God’s love with our brothers and sisters, God’s other children, there is no tyrant who can resist us, no oppression that cannot be ended, no hunger that cannot be fed, no wound that cannot be healed, no hatred that cannot be turned to love, no dream that cannot be fulfilled.


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