I’m taking the liberty this Easter, as I have in previous years, to proclaim the message of hope.

I’m fully aware many readers will either choose to move along or wonder why it’s even allowed in a secular publication.

Since I’m writing a message about the good news of the Christian faith, still others shudder during this divisive political time when allegiances among many churches both for and against policies coming from the executive branch of our federal government seem to make a mockery of historic traditions and Scriptural truths.

Amid this present chaos, the past three days marked Good Friday and Easter when Christians, both devout and those hedging their bets, celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who practicing Christians believe was the Messiah (the “Christ” in Greek, or “the anointed one”). We believe that Jesus, an observant Jew, rose from the dead and delivered his people from the curse of sin and death.

In all three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), Jesus celebrates the ritual Passover meal in Jerusalem with his closest followers. John’s gospel, while significantly different in emphasis than the other three, also records Jesus’ extensive final teaching in the narrative of the last hours before he was betrayed, tried and crucified.

At the centerpiece of this meal, the Passover sacrifice, was a lamb. For more than a thousand years, hearkening back to the time of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, observant Jews understood that an animal’s sacrificial blood was necessary to bridge the chasm between a Holy God and sinful human beings.

And when the Lamb of God offered himself up on a Roman cross, God passed over his followers, delivering them from the inevitable cold and eternal winter of death and instead demonstrated his love for us.

Christians believe that without the blood that Jesus spilled on what we now honor as Good Friday, they would never be reunited with their creator, the God of the universe.

When Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover meal, which Christians identify as the Last Supper, he took the ritual wine and bread and, instead of reciting Passover passages from the Torah, did something radically different:

“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’” (Matthew 26:26-28)

Shortly afterward, he was betrayed, arrested, tried, tortured, then executed on a cross. The New Testament tells of how Yeshua (Hebrew; “Jesus” comes from the Greek Iesoûs) was killed, then wrapped in white linen and buried during the Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread that begins right after Passover. And how he rose on the third day.

So, a question: If I really believe that Jesus died on a cross to make me right with God, and if I really believe he was resurrected from the dead, how does that change my life?

Or is that statement just something I recite on religious holidays and then it’s business as usual?

Think about what turned the disparate and uneducated band of Jesus’ disciples, who had no standing in Jewish or Roman society, to become fearless proclaimers of this new Messianic kingdom.

Peter, who cowered outside the proceedings where Jesus was confronted by the religious leaders before being turned over to the Roman authorities, and then denied even knowing Jesus, would soon become a powerful proclaimer of this gospel (the word “gospel” is a translation of the Greek word euangelion, which means “good news”). So much so that tradition from early in church history says Peter was crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus.

Why would he choose such torture? Because he and the other disciples went from being afraid and hopelessly discouraged to having witnessed Jesus rising from the grave. It gave them a powerful confidence that changed the world.

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit …”

And the Bible says that for believers, we too can have that confidence and hope because that same spirit of God that raised Jesus now dwells in us.

And everything changes.

But, yes, in one sense, nothing much of the world has changed in 2,000 years. In ancient times, privileged classes played by their own rules and, of course, we see they still do. Demagogic leaders led the masses into the abyss. Violence, power and sex were predominant. As they are today.

But I’ve come to understand, as the years swiftly pass by, of how so much of the time I’ve had here was spent advancing myself, or clutching for futile wealth and position.

All indeed is vanity.

I’ve watched and mourned as family and longtime friends have suffered and died. Or as others have been trampled by a world that can be unforgiving and unrelenting.

And, yet, isn’t this what draws crowds into churches on Easter? Loss and the fleeting nature of life and the inevitability of death, often dimly perceived though no less determinative, as we proceed along a frustrating journey seeking peace of mind and rest of soul.

For God so loved the world …

It’s the resurrection story, one of forgiveness and belonging, of a love supreme.

This is eternal life. It’s why the early Christians could have scattered when their leader was tortured and executed, but were remarkably empowered when he rose from the dead and why we too have a living hope that today’s troubles, viewed within the tapestry of eternity, are temporary.

Because the gospel of love is the narrow path leading us from this world of broken dreams.

Don Miller is the Sentinel’s Opinion Editor and the former Editor of the Sentinel and Monterey Herald.

Photo caption: The site, according to ancient tradition, of Jesus’s tomb, in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built in the 4th century. Don Miller/Sentinel