Do not be afraid – An Easter Message
“Do not be afraid.”
This is a constant refrain in scripture. From Genesis, where God comes to Abram in a vision and says, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” through to Revelation when the Son of Man says, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”
Fear of their own arrests and death held the first followers of Jesus in its immobilizing grip on the Friday their longed-for Messiah was killed on a cross. On Saturday, they remained bound by that same terror as they huddled together in the Upper Room in Jerusalem where they had celebrated the Passover. Though Jesus had been trying to prepare them for his betrayal and death, those who traveled with him from Galilee had not been able to hold on to hope. In retrospect, we read the Bible and wonder why they were so trapped by fear that they did not see that death could not hold the author of life. They had been present when Jesus said:
“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid,” as he walked toward his disciples’ boat across a storm-tossed sea.
And they were there when Jesus said, “Do not be afraid,” to the synagogue leader, Jairus, before he brought his daughter back to life.
Yet when we consider our own experiences, we understand all too well how they could fail to see what now seems evident. We know despair can prevent our seeing anything but the possibility of further grief and tragedy.
Panic is our body’s automatic reaction when we feel threatened. That response is healthy in the right circumstances. I am reminded of a mutual flash of terror that kept a venomous snake and me away from one another. We had just finished building the church building at King of Peace in Kingsland. I was waiting for an inspector to arrive. I used the wait time to begin pulling up the erosion control fence between the building and our neighbor’s undeveloped acreage. In reaching around the back side of the fencing to grab a stake, I exposed a water moccasin. The snake’s primitive brain kicked in immediately. It coiled back exposing fangs standing out from the bright-white mouth. My body had an equal and opposite reaction, opting for literal flight rather than fight. In that same fraction of a fraction of a second, I practically levitated, rising from the ground faster than I could fully register what was happening. I landed on my feet, upright and on full alert. My heart raced as the snake quickly slithered away. The adrenaline that flooded my system kept me anxious after the threat had long passed. But that was just my God-given alert system keeping me ready in case of a renewed threat.
In the midst of uncertainty, with so much that matters to us beyond our ability to control, fear is a natural response. That anxious response is a gift in the right circumstances. But as a day-to-day way of living, being on high alert is not healthy. Yet, in this present moment with our world at war, in a nation where divisions are all too evident, experiencing anxiety and dread is common and our fight or flight responses are not helpful. We have to pin our hope on something more powerful than the chaos we see around us.
This is where it matters that we do not place our trust in the metaphor of resurrection for a Rabbi whose teaching lived on. Our faith is built from the conviction that Jesus was not only put to death on a cross, but in his body he was raised to new life, never to die again. His fear-bound followers found their lives transformed by this central fact of human history that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Knowing that the God who made us out of love for love is with us always and can defeat even death itself makes it possible to break the hold fear can place on our lives. Let us begin at Easter with that greatest fear, death. If we can make peace with our own death and the loss of those we love, then so much of the anxiety of living is relativized. Scripture tells us that while death is very real, we do not have to live in fear for ourselves and those we grieve. God remains in control.
As Christians, we can approach death with confidence with the promise of eternal life lived in the presence of God. That promise is not for the future alone. You can also experience something of the hereafter in the here and now by being aware of God’s presence in all the places you find yourself in this life. Just as Jesus was with his first followers after his death and remained with them by the power of the Spirit following his return to heaven. The proof of Heaven is the nearness of God in our daily lives.
And because we need not fear death and we can experience God’s abiding presence within us, we can move from despair to hope in the many other occasions for anxiety in our lives. We worship a living Lord. We can hold in prayer the uncertainty we face or the decisions we are wrestling with, asking the Spirit’s guidance. We can pray for God to close the wrong doors, barring even what seems like the most promising of paths if it is not God’s will. And we can ask God to show us the way we should go, knowing that even if it looks impossible, we will know it was God’s desire when what looked like a wall becomes the way forward.
In whatever you are confronted with now or you have to deal with in the future, know that the love that is within the Holy Trinity that we see most fully in Jesus is with you. In every moment of doubt and uncertainty, recall that the creator of the cosmos who knows you by name will never leave you or forsake you. This does not make the problems of life any less real from the smallest of worries of your day to the immense tragedy of the death of someone you love. But rather than merely having the fight or flight options you can choose to abide, knowing that the One who is present in you is greater than the one in our fear-filled world. For you have the comfort of how God has been with you in the past and the knowledge that the one who holds the future is with you now, so you are attuned to hear more clearly that constant refrain we find in scripture:
“Do not be afraid.”