Hope is a Duty
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Matthew 28:1-10
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
April 5, 2026 Easter
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1xaS5gRpWA
Hope can be born out of death. Death creates heartbreak, loss and loneliness. Death may be violent and unnecessary. All of that is true, and still, hope can be born out of death. It happened in recent weeks, the violent, tragic, completely preventable deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, shot by federal agents. We lament those deaths and pray for accountability. Without diminishing the grief of those families, we see that the response of the people of Minneapolis, their persistent organized protest and resistance has given hope to the rest of the country. [1]
Hope can also be out of trauma. Angela read from the prophet Jeremiah. We are not going to unpack that reading this morning, but it evokes three stories of generational trauma – the time of the enslavement in Egypt and the wilderness wandering that followed, the fall of the Northern Kingdom to the nation of Assyria in 722 BCE and the Babylonian Exile, 125 years later. Jeremiah is writing at the time of the Babylonian Exile. His words of comfort “disrupt the harsh clamped-down life of people who live in the persistent grip of trauma and disaster.”[2] Jeremiah reminds them of their history, tells them that even in the scattering of exile, God will do what God has done before to form a new people because of God’s unfailing love. Hope can be born out of trauma.
The historian Howard Zinn wrote “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.” [3]
Easter is that kind of history. To tell this story is to remember the grisly execution of an innocent man, to remember the betrayal, mocking, derision and cruelty, but also to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, courage and compassion. And then to recall the quavering courage of his community on that resurrection morning. We tell this story every year to recall our own history with God’s unfailing love, to remember the hope that is ours.
Hope can be born out of death. Hope can be born out of trauma.
During World War II, some American and Russian soldiers were held in the same camp as prisoners of war. Russia had not signed the Geneva Convention, and the treatment of the Soviet prisoners was especially appalling. Their barracks were in different areas, separated by barbed wire.
The Americans received a weekly package of food from the Red Cross, but the Russians were given only one liter of turnip soup and one liter of water per day. The plan was to use them for labor until they died. And it was working. They were dying by the hundreds and the Americans noticed.
Among the prisoners was a Russian army dentist who was allowed to attend the needs of the Americans. Two American brothers communicated a plan to him, a plan to share their food. They would secretly set aside portions of meat, beans, biscuits, and a little chocolate from the Red Cross parcels.
At night after the sentry went past, they threw some of their food to the Russians. It was a distance of only 8 meters. Some of them were capable of throwing such a parcel 100 meters. The danger was not in the throwing, but in the possibility of getting caught. It took quite a while to get all the food delivered in the dark this way. If they had been caught, they would have been executed. But they did it anyway . . . for weeks.
Then, when some of the food was discovered on the Russian side, all 4,000 Americans were brought out into the hot sun, and four Gestapo men went down the line demanding to know who organized the plot. For hours they stood there. They stood in absolute silence. Not one American spoke. The Germans eventually sent the Americans back to their compound. And that night, when the camp went quiet, the parcels flew over the wire again. [4]
There were only 8 Americans involved in this, because the fewer who knew, the safer it was. They probably saved the lives of hundreds of Russian strangers. They provided food to keep them alive. But they did more than sustain physical life. Living in those conditions was no gift. They kept alive the possibility of liberation and the hope of a return to life at home with family, life in all its fullness. Hope born in the midst of trauma and death.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, probably Jesus’ own mother, are living through unimaginable horror, having watched every moment of the violence Jesus suffered and been utterly powerless to intervene. They come to the tomb fully aware that they are still at the mercy of Rome. The soldiers who crucified Jesus still occupy the city and even guard his grave. Pontius Pilate is still governor. Rome has significant real-world power to inflict do serious and deadly pain.
Arriving, they experience another surreal event. The earth shakes, an angel descends, rolls away the stone sealing the grave and sits on it. The Roman soldiers shake and then pass out from fear. The angel’s first words to the women are “Don’t you be afraid.”
And then, as if their systems are not already overloaded, they are told that resurrection has happened. The stone has been rolled away, not to let Jesus out, but to let the witnesses in. In defiance of Rome and its murderous power, Jesus has risen from the dead.
The angel said to tell the others “Jesus is risen.” On the way to do that, they encounter Jesus himself. He tells them “Stop being afraid. Go tell the disciples to meet me in Galilee.”
Leaving the tomb, the women carry tenuous hope. Jesus is alive and is going ahead to Galilee. Galilee is where it all began. It is the border land -- the place where cultures clashed and merged. It is not a center of power, but a place where ordinary people live and struggle to survive. Where they first received the goods news of his teaching and healing.
Galilee was also home for the disciples, the place where their friends and families and jobs were. Galilee was where they had lived their ordinary lives, . . .until the day they responded to a call from Jesus.
And now, he has gone ahead of them, back to Galilee, where it all started, where there is still work to be done. It becomes the implicit “invitation for every [one who reads] this Gospel: Go to Galilee, continue the work of the kingdom that Jesus left unfinished, and there you will see him. He is not in the tomb.”[5]
This is the hope that Mary and Mary carry to the other disciples who are also fearful and traumatized. That, incredible as it sounds, Jesus is alive. Empire killed him, but death cannot hold him.
At this point, it seems to me, the disciples have to make a decision, a choice about despair or trust. To persist in despair would mean continuing to be afraid, in hiding, dismissing the women’s words. To trust would mean to accept the women’s hope and act on it, without any proof, because they haven’t seen Jesus for themselves, to go back to Galilee and pick up where they left off, but as people who are no longer afraid.
Austin Channing Brown is one of my favorite contemporary writers. As a black woman in white supremacist America, she says “Don’t lose hope. Hope is a duty we have to each other … a duty to work toward the freedom of all humanity- no matter what.” [6]
It turns out she is not the first to say that hope is a duty. Pope Francis said it. And so did the Romantic poets Coleridge and Shelley in the 1800’s. Now I have to tell you, even though I really like her writing, the idea that hope is a duty did not sit well with me at first. Probably, mostly because I don’t like to be told what to do. And also, because hope is hard right now.
On social media recently, I saw a story about another outrage, another surreal event in American 2026. In the comments under the story, someone wrote “Things are going to get worse before. . . they get even more worse.” That pretty much sums up my mood most of the time. It’s not a good place from which to summon the hope that is my duty.
But I’m rethinking that. I’m thinking about the men who received the hope carried by the women on Easter. They accepted their duty to trust it and act on it. We know they did, because in just a few verses, Matthew tells us that they showed up in Galilee.
And because they did, we are here. They kept the hope of resurrection alive for the next generation and the next. It’s a hope we now carry within, a hope we may enliven in others because it is our duty.
If hope can be born out of death,
If hope can be born out of trauma, then how much more enduring is hope born from resurrection.
So, friends, let us stop being afraid. The powers that seem immovable have been shaken before and will be again.
Therefore, go back to Galilee and practice hope.
Go and tell that goodness is stronger than evil.
Go tell that death does not have the final word.
Go and tell the good news that God is alive in the world because Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed.
[1] Susan Thistlewaite, Holy Week Begins with a Yes to Life and a No to Death https://open.substack.com/pub/susanthistlethwaitewaite/p/holy-week-begins-with-a-yes-to-life?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
[2] Kathleen M. O’Connor Jeremiah: Pain and Promise, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), pp 103-4
[3] Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2006), p. 270
[4] https://youtu.be/xf8aM5zYzNk?si=80p8dcHAGo3Ok79X
[5] Alan Culpepper, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Mark, (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2007,) p. 597