Following Jesus offers hope because of an empty grave and a risen Saviour.  Hope that isn’t a vague wish but which is certain and so transforms the way we live now because we can live knowing God, confident that justice will be done, with hope beyond death, and an eternity knowing and enjoying God beyond

We love happy endings don’t we? How many films can you remember that don’t have a happy ending? There are a few, but they’re memorable partly because they’re different. Somehow, they leave us feeling that something’s missing, unresolved, not quite right.

But the vast majority of films end happily, there may be tears and tensions on the way but they’re resolved at the end. Simba becomes king. Daniel makes Mr Miyagi proud as he wins the tournament. The Empire is defeated. Voldemort vanquished. The ring hurled into the fires of Mount Doom. And the guy gets the girl or the girl gets the guy. And everything is right with the world.

In fact, we even adapt stories to give them happy endings. In Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame Quasimodo rescues Esmerelda, accidentally kills the evil Frollo, and is welcomed joyfully into Parisienne society. That’s a far cry from Victor Hugo’s original story. Where Frollo frames Esmerelda for his crime and laughs as she’s executed for it. An enraged Quasimodo then kills Frollo by pushing him from the top of the Cathedral; before he starves to death in his grief over Esmerelda. The book ends many years later when two skeletons, that of a hunchback and a woman are found in Esmerelda’s tomb. You can see why Disney adapted it can’t you?

But which of the 2 is the future really like? Is it a happily ever after? The joy of justice done, welcome received, communities reconciled? Or is it the bleak destitution of death and nothingness beyond it? And why are we so drawn to one rather than the other? Why do we love happy, hope filled endings?

Turn to the passage we read earlier. And there we read one of the bleakest phrases in the bible “we had hoped…” It’s a phrase that says so much doesn’t it. It speaks of dreams and hopes dashed against the rocks of reality.

Here are two friends trudging back home from Jerusalem weighed down by grief. They’re chatting about the whirlwind of events of the last week as they try to make sense of suddenly finding all their hopes dashed. Can you see them? Can you hear them? Voices cracking with pain, questions asked, answers to why? what now? what it means? glaringly absent in the silences that follow them.

As they walk a stranger catches up and walks with them. Luke tells us it’s Jesus, but they don’t know that. He asks them what they’re talking about, and incredulous they tell him(19-21). They’re talking about Jesus, welcomed as king on Sunday, betrayed and arrested on Thursday night. Tried, convicted, brutalised, crucified, entombed on Friday. And we hear the agony of lost hope in that phrase “we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”

Have you heard the phrase put your money where your mouth is. It means to back things up to act on what you say. That’s what these two had done with their hope. As they heard of Jesus, listened to him teach the Bible like no one else ever had, saw the miracles he did that only God could do, counted off the prophecies of the Messiah he fulfilled, their hope swelled. At last, here was the Servant of the Lord, all the promises of God come true. Hope realised. They believed it so strongly that they left home and followed Jesus, identified as disciples of Jesus despite rising hostility to him. They’d acted on their hope. They believed it. Hope had come true. God had come to free his people from sin and restore them to himself.

This wasn’t a hope like we hope our team wins, or that it doesn’t rain when we haven’t got our coat, or that the children lie in. This was a hope built on evidence, promises after promise after promise fulfilled. This hope was a confident expectation that Jesus would free Israel. After all what could stop the one who could still storms, cast out legions of demons, and raise the dead.

But now their hopes have been destroyed by death, the ultimate dream dasher and hope halter.

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