Hope is a Group Project

Pr. Jaz Bowen-Waring

2nd Sunday After Easter April 12, 2026

It’s a Sunday evening, and they were hiding behind locked doors. Their lives were turned upside down, and they feared for their safety. They were afraid because someone they loved and trusted was lynched and murdered… and they could be next. It’s a Sunday evening, and they were hiding behind locked doors— not knowing if they were going to be snatched up and never heard from again on their way to work, to get groceries, or walking home minding their own business. It’s a Sunday evening, and they were hiding behind locked doors because they never knew what their paranoid and violent emperor would do next. This scene could be anywhere: immigrants hiding from ICE in Santa Ana, Palestinians and Iranians hiding from soldiers and bombs, students hiding from a gunman in a classroom. But the scene was in 1st-century Jerusalem, after Jesus was executed. That particular Sunday evening, through locked doors, Jesus enters. Resurrection begins in locked rooms and tombs. Not by busting down the door like Rambo, but in gentle mystery. His first words to his disciples are not: Why are you hiding, cowards? Have faith! or Get it together! But: Peace be with you. Jesus’ response to the disciples’ fear shows us how God meets us. God does not coerce. God does not force transformation upon us. God offers presence. God works relationally. God meets fear with companionship and community. Even in fear: Hope is a group project. The disciples survived because they stayed together. Then there is another familiar scene—where Jesus shows his scars. The holes still in his hands and feet. The wound in his side. Marks of the violence he endured under intense interrogation, public humiliation, and a criminal’s execution. These are the marks of Christ’s solidarity with those who have endured the oppression of detention centers, assaults in school bathrooms, and innocent people sitting on death row. Jesus shows us that a divine body is not a perfect body, but a wounded body. A scarred body. A surviving body. Resurrection is not about pretending the trauma never happened. It is about refusing to let trauma define the future. God does not rewind history, because time is always pushing forward. God works with the real skin and bones of humanity, and gathers the broken pieces and creates new possibilities. Communities carry wounds: grief, injustice, betrayal, violence, burnout, and disappointment. And still—we are here in spite of it all. The wounds are not proof that God failed. They are proof that love survived. Healing is communal. Recovery is communal. Resurrection is communal. Hope is a group project. There are times when we question—or even doubt—hope. When we become cynical, or just so weary from fighting the good fight that we start to ask: Where is God? How much longer must we endure this? Why is there so much suffering in the world? Thomas speaks for us in this moment. Thomas is not weak in faith. On the contrary, Thomas is a person of action and embodied hope. He is not with the disciples hiding behind locked doors. He is out in the streets—probably getting groceries with Mary and the other women disciples. Thomas was grieving too, and perhaps even more weary from helping taking care of everyone. People like Thomas and Mary Magdalene are people who pray with their feet and look for practical expressions of hope. So Thomas was honest when he was told that Christ had risen. Thomas was not going to settle for a secondhand, shallow kind of hope he had not experienced for himself. And Jesus honors that. Jesus appears to Thomas and draws him closer to hope enfleshed. God does not demand blind belief or shallow optimism. God invites participation. We do not believe alone. We question together. We search together. Hope is a group project. From a Sunday evening hiding behind locked doors, to a public proclamation, Peter finds the courage to step into active hope. His fear of violence and social stigma is transformed into public witness—not because the circumstances suddenly became safe, but because resurrection changed what he believed was possible. And he was not speaking alone. He was supported by his community of fellow disciples. Resurrection turns survivors into witnesses. Witness today looks like: showing up for neighbors, protecting the vulnerable, telling the truth, building community, and organizing care. Hope becomes real when we act together. Hope is a group project. Speaking of group projects, on Friday we watched the Artemis II successfully complete their mission around the moon. NASA was able to resurrect the dream human space travel with the hopes of one day walking on the moon again. Through the efforts of thousands of people, and billions of dollars, four brave individuals were able to travel further and any human ever has. That wasn’t the only achievement! This was the first time a Canadian, a Person of Color, and a woman traveled to the moon. I don’t know about you, but this fills me with so much hope. Artemis II showed all of us that it is possible for thousands of people work together through complex problems and be successful. In a country where progress feels stagnant, and our hope for a better tomorrow seems dead in the water. Hope breaks through the atmosphere of our cynicism and opens us up to new possibilities. Hope is not something we wait for. Hope is something we build. Together. Because hope—is a group project.