Easter Sunday Amidst the Threat of Homelessness

As we approach Easter Sunday this year to be honest many of us will probably do so with some fear that we are at risk of losing our home. We know that an unprecedented number of people around us are now homeless: we see them sleeping rough and in tents on our daily commute. We’re aware that even many middle-income earners are now joining their ranks for the first time. And it’s now such a stretch to cover the cost of our housing each month - if it was ever possible at all - that the thought occasionally arises that it wouldn’t take much and we could be next. And that fear of losing the roof over our own head only compounds our anxiety that we are on the brink of losing our broader home as well. For every dimension of it now seems in upheaval: from the increasing displacement of people from their homelands; erosion of social norms; geopolitical instability; economic turmoil; environmental disruption; and ecological collapse. In sum it feels a bit like ‘the nothing’ from the infamous movie Never-Ending Story threatens to completely ‘un-world’ us at the moment.^[1]

But if that’s the case then rather than merely trying to distract ourselves with our Easter Sunday celebrations we ought to embrace them this year. Because Christians believe the very event which they celebrate - the resurrection of Jesus from death to life again - holds the ultimate antidote.

We are certainly not alone in our fear: thousands of years ago the people of ancient Israel, for instance, were also menaced by the threat of homelessness. Yet they believed God promised one day He Himself would root out its causes once and for all. Early on they tended to assume these were fairly superficial: mere disorderly nations around them which threatened to overthrow them. But gradually it became clear they ultimately lay much deeper in a disorder common to humanity itself: our pervasive and obstinate tendency to be selfish and its inevitably corrosive social consequences of decay and death.

‘And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you… Your house and your kingdom will endure forever...’2 Samuel 7:8-16

On Easter Sunday Christians celebrate the good news that God has made good on that promise. He not only shared our home - ‘made His dwelling among us’ (Jn.1:14) - by assuming a human body just like ours. But thereafter He both resisted every inclination to human selfishness and bore all its consequences of decay and death on our behalf as well. And so God raised His mortal dwelling from death back to a life now free from any possibility of selfishness, decay and death once and for all. And far from being a mere one-off He promises that’s the blueprint - the ‘firstfruits’ - of the renovation He plans to carry out throughout the rest of our cosmos as well.

‘But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.  But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.’1 Corinthians 15:20-22

So Christians believe one day God will do exactly the same for each person who trusts Him. According to the famous summary of 1 Corinthians 15 by medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae, III.ii.q82-85) one day God will raise our human bodies from death back to a life just like Jesus’ own in several ways. Firstly, it will be one which is ‘spiritual’. That doesn’t mean it will be some kind of disembodied or ghostly existence but a physical one which is now entirely resistant to the possibility of selfishness and hence consistent with the will of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor.2). And moreover, it will be one which is both ‘imperishable’ and ‘immortal’ - impervious to decay and death - as well.

The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body… When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”1 Corinthians 15:42-54

And the church expects God will do something similar to the non-human world around us as well: it too will undergo a radical renovation akin to a resurrection. Romans 8:19-22 pictures that ‘the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God’. What it means is that just as the non-human world has suffered the consequences of human selfishness; it will one day also share the benefits when humans are raised from death back to life again. Sometimes Christians are a little hesitant about this notion because several passages of scripture suggest that ‘the heavens… will be destroyed by fire…’. (2 Pet.3:10). But most New Testament interpreters believe this is nothing more than a metaphor for the radicality of that future transformation.

‘[Like] the rest of the New Testament, Peter is not saying that the present world of space, time and matter is going to be burnt up and destroyed. That is more like the view of ancient Stoicism… and… some modern ideas…. What will happen, as many early Christian teachers said, is that some sort of 'fire'…will come upon the whole earth, not to destroy, but… to purify it by burning up everything that doesn't meet the test’. N. T. Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone (2004), 119-120.

And Christians believe this good news that God is radically renovating our cosmos should move us from either despair or indifference at its current fate to co-labour with Him by helping renovate it however we can - by caring for others; helping them become more like Jesus; and contributing to the good of politics, the economy, education, health, business, industry, construction, technology, agriculture, the arts and welfare (not least by addressing the more immediate causes of homelessness) - because we can be certain all such endeavours won’t merely be wasted but brought to fruition by His own future renovation. Throughout scripture that’s the primary implication of the Christian hope. The longest passage on the resurrection, for instance, concludes, ‘Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain’ (1 Cor.15). Historically few have perceived this biblical insight more clearly than German theologian Jürgen Moltmann.

'Resurrection is not a consoling opium, soothing us with the promise of a better world… It is the energy for a rebirth of this life… [H]ope doesn’t point to another world. It is focused on the redemption of this one.'Jürgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World (1994), 81.

So we may feel assailed by the threat of homelessness this Easter. But God has not abandoned us to it. He is renovating our current home brick by brick upon the foundation of the bodily resurrection of Jesus until it is secure from that threat once and for all. And He invites us to not only trust but join Him in that endeavour as well. That’s the hope Christians celebrate this Easter Sunday. And isn’t that exactly the kind of good news we all need right now?

[1] For an overview of the current statistics and immediate causes of homelessness in Australia see https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/homelessness-and-homelessness-services . For an insightful theological analysis of the current crisis of homelessness, along with the popular theologies of home which contribute to it, and an attempt to offer an alternative see S. Garrigan, A Theology of Home in a Time of Homelessness (Cambridge: CUP, 2025).