Sixth Sunday of Easter
1 Peter 3:13-22 and John 14:15-21
The Rev. Dr. Sandy Selby
When the woman, who was in her 40s, walked into the small room, the door was locked behind her. The room had two windows, one open to the church, the other to the outside world. In the church to which her room was attached, a Requiem Mass was said for her, because she was now viewed as being “dead to the world.” Because this particular church was called St. Julian’s, located in Norwich, England, the woman henceforth was known as Julian of Norwich. She spent the last twenty-five years of her life in that small room that was about 10’ by 12’ in size, hearing Mass and receiving Communion through the window to the church, and being present to visitors who came to her outside window for prayer and spiritual counsel.
Julian’s calling to the ministry of an anchorite was a vocation that was valued in medieval Europe. To have an anchorite living in an anchor-hold, a small room attached to the church, was seen as a great blessing to that church and to the surrounding community. Aside from her ministry as anchorite to St. Julian’s, we know very little about Julian of Norwich other than what we learn in her writings. She was born in 1342 and died sometime after 1416, a remarkably long life in that day and age.
When Julian was thirty years old she became seriously ill, and a priest gave her Last Rites. When she was near death, she experienced a series of sixteen visions, which she referred to as “showings,” beginning with vivid visions of Christ dying on the cross. She wrote about those visions in a book titled Showings, which is the earliest known book written in English by a woman.
In her visions, Christ gave Julian two promises that are woven into her writings: “See how I love you!” and “All will be well.” “These…promises of divine love and hope transformed not only Julian’s own life but also her understanding of God, human life, and reality itself.”[1] And the reality of life in 14th-century Norwich was harsh. Julian was six years old when the Black Plague devastated England in 1348, killing about half the population of Norwich. This was the first of seven episodes of plague during Julian’s lifetime. Along with plague, war and severe famine brought significant economic and social turmoil. We don’t know much about Julian’s personal life. Some scholars think that her husband and her children all died from the plague, which is poignant for us to think about, on this Mother’s Day.
It’s impossible for us, 600 years later, to imagine the turmoil and fear during the time of the Black Plague. Our closest reference point is probably the early days of COVID, in 2020. Imagine having the Black Plague, that had killed half the population, return about every ten years during your lifetime. That’s what life was like for Julian of Norwich. And yet, she is best known for saying,“All will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well.” [2]
That is a profound statement of hope! “All will be well” because, writes Julian, “[All of God’s Creation] lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.”[3] Julian learned from the visions she experienced, and from her many years of contemplation while living in her anchor-hold, that God’s love made known in Jesus Christ is the basis for hope. As Jesuit priest Jim Martin says, the message of the resurrection of Jesus is that “Hope is stronger than despair; love is stronger than hate; nothing is impossible with God; and death does not have the last word.”[4]
The 1st Letter of Peter says it this way: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3). For the early Christians in Asia Minor to whom Peter was writing, that “living hope” was essential. In Greco-Roman society, Christians were seen as a significant threat to the stability of the Empire, and were subject to persecution. Yet Peter tells them to “stand firm,” for in the resurrection, death has been overcome. He writes,“Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:14b-16a).
What an important challenge those words are for us, today! How do we “account for the hope that is in us” in this world of violence, conflict, racism, inequity, and despair? Here it’s important, as people of faith, to recognize the difference between hope and optimism. Optimism, a belief that good things will happen in the future, originates within us and is grounded in our expectation of a particular outcome. But hope originates from and is grounded in God. We don’t conjure up hope; hope for the future is a gift, grounded in the love of God, that is realized in the present moment. Hope tells us that no matter our circumstance, God is faithful. As Julian says, “All will be well.”
Hope that is anchored in God’s love and defended, as Peter says,“with gentleness and respect,” is essential, not just for us as individuals, but as a society. Even before the pandemic hit in 2020, we had a crisis of despair in this country that was only made worse by the impact of COVID—a crisis of despair that continues, today. In their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism published in 2020, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton chronicle the reasons behind the significant rise, in the past few decades, in deaths by suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism, a category known by public health professionals as “deaths of despair.”
According to Case and Deaton, the underlying issues are both economic and social, related to the changing structure of our economy that has led to significant job loss and a decline in wages, especially for people who do not have a four-year college education. Underlying the sense of despair is, to quote the authors, “the loss of meaning, of dignity, of pride, and of self-respect that comes with the loss of marriage and of community.”[5] Case and Deaton call this phenomenon, this loss of social capital, “social disintegration.”
Disintegration. The sense that the fabric of our lives, individually and collectively, is being torn to pieces. That things are falling apart. None of us likes to be there. And that is precisely what many of us experienced during COVID, regardless of our social and economic circumstances, and what many people are experiencing today. It’s one of the reasons that some people, today, welcome authoritarian leadership. It gives them a sense that someone is in control. To paraphrase philosopher Hannah Arendt: “Totalitarianism is organized loneliness.”[6]
Julian of Norwich knew very well about social disintegration, pandemic, uncertainty, and despair. In her time of greatest vulnerability, when Julian was near death, her heart and mind were broken open by sixteen visions. In those visions she experienced firsthand the love of Christ, a love that was deep, and tender. Through the depth of that love, Julian received the gift of hope. When Jesus told her in her visions that “All will be well,” she believed him. That love and that hope saved her life, and so transformed her that she chose to spend her last twenty-five years in a 10-by-12 room attached to a church, with a window to the church and a window to the world, writing about what she had learned from her visions. Julian’s great work, Showings, was born in that little room where she was nourished by Christ’s love, through her window to the church. She shared that love with those with whom she spoke, one person at a time, at her outside window to the world, and with those who read her words today.
We, too, have a window to the church and a window to the world. God’s love saved Julian. God’s love will save us, too. Keep your window open to the church and to the Word of God. Be nourished by the promise from Jesus Christ, in today’s gospel lesson, when he told the disciples on the night before he died,“I will not leave you orphaned….because I live, you also will live” (John 14:18-19). Keep your window open to the church.
And keep your window open to the world. Share the love of God with others, one person at a time. Now, more than ever, we need to be tender-hearted, following Christ’s commandment to“love one another” (John 13:34). As St. Theresa of Calcutta said, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” That will be our salvation.
In a time of pandemic 600 years ago, Julian of Norwich wrote words that have great wisdom for us, today, saying: “The love of God creates such a unity in us that no man or woman who understands this can possibility separate himself or herself from any other.”[7] Our essential unity through God’s love for all people, for all of creation, is the basis for our hope. Julian said it this way in the concluding chapter of her book:
What I saw most clearly was that love is God’s meaning. God wants us to know that he loved us before he even made us, and this love has never diminished and never will. All God’s actions unfold from this love, and through this love God makes everything that happens of value to us, and in this love we find everlasting life. Our creation has a starting point, but the love in which God made us has no beginning, and this love is our true source.[8]
Because of that great love, Jesus was able to make this promise to Julian, and to us: “All will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing will be well.”[9] Christ’s resurrection that we celebrate this Easter season tells us that “Hope is stronger than despair; love is stronger than hate; nothing is impossible with God; and death does not have the last word.”[10]
“All will be well.”
Amen.
[1]Lisa Dahill, 40-Day Journey with Julian of Norwich (Minneapolis: Augsburg Books, 2008), 17.
[2] Mirabai Starr, Julian of Norwich: The Showings (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2022), 67.
[3] Julian of Norwich, Showings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 130.
[4] Jim Martin, “Filipino Cardinal ‘Ambo’ David on hearing God’s voice in the Bible,” Podcast: The Spiritual Life with Jim Martin, May 5, 2026.
[5]Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 8.
[6] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951.
[7] Starr, 180.
[8] Starr, 225.
[9]Starr, 67.
[10] Martin