WITH FEAR AND JOY
/This special blog post is a sermon presented by Rev. Jody Clegg at Union Avenue Christian Church on Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023, based on the texts of Colossians 3: 1-4 and Matthew 28: 1-10.
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
I want to talk to you about fear.
Such an obvious subject for a sermon on the most joyous day of the Christian calendar, isn’t it? I’d be speaking facetiously if fear didn’t seem to be such a prominent theme in the Gospels’ resurrection narratives. In John, the disciples are hiding behind locked doors, we're told, for fear of the religious leaders. In both Mark and Luke, the women who go to the tomb are terrified when the messenger brings news of the Resurrection appears to them. In Mark's gospel, they sprint away from the tomb with Olympic-worthy speed “for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." (Mark 16:8) That's even how Mark, who must have had a descendant who wrote the last episode of “The Sopranos”, chooses to end the story (and the earliest manuscript of the gospel, too)!
So, why should the account in Matthew not give us frightened recipients of resurrection news? With the spectacle described, in all of its glory- quaking ground, shimmering angel and all- wouldn't you be a little afraid?
They also knew in Biblical times that it wasn't normal for dead people to come back to life. Beneath the hope of resurrection is something that in any age, we may find a little weird and creepy. Resurrection can haunt us as well as provide hope. Horror stories don’t scare us when a dead body emerges. They’ll often scare us when we find out a character we thought was dead actually lives, or we realize there’s life in places where we assumed death and decay had taken over.
When I think of the fear so prevalent in all of the Gospels' stories about Jesus's post resurrection appearances I hear some echoes of the first Easter song I remember learning: "Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone.” As much as I'd love to be able to affirm that last phrase, I can't, based on Scripture or my experience. Our fears can stubbornly cling to us, and even define us if we’re not careful. Those fears may even be more real to us than the good news we celebrate today. Even with the fear that we bring with us today, the fears we may not want to acknowledge on a day of celebration, those fears are met with the astonishing news that Jesus has risen. Confronted with this good news, where do we go with our fears?
Brene Brown is known as a popular researcher and lecturer, and not as a theologian or Biblical scholar, Her insight about vulnerability and joy gives me a new lens on this resurrection story in Matthew and our place in it. She writes:
“When we lose the ability or willingness to be vulnerable, joy becomes something we approach with deep foreboding. . .
We don’t want to be blindsided by hurt. We don’t want to be caught off-guard, so we literally practice being devastated or never move from self-elected disappointment.
For those of us who rehearse tragedy, there’s a reason these images flood into our mind the second we’re overwhelmed with joy. When we spend our lives (knowingly or
unknowingly) pushing away vulnerability, we can’t hold space for the uncertainty, risk,
and emotional exposure of joy.”
This deep foreboding is one of the armors against vulnerability- to avoid hurt, change, challenge, risk, anything that can be seen as weakness or embarrassment. The guards in our story appear to use metaphorical as well as actual armor. Keep reading, and we find out that after they stop shaking like dead men, they're quite willing to say Jesus is stolen and accept the money from the chief priests, Perhaps living into the joy of the resurrection changes too much for them.
Believing Jesus’ dead body was stolen may seem more plausible, but it won't make them less afraid. It won't change the fact the Empire keeps them in fear still. The chief priests won't be less afraid. They will still fear losing their grip on the people through tradition and order.
Belief in the resurrection won’t necessarily keep us from protecting ourselves against its joy, either. That’s in fact a problem as old as the first century church. Paul rebukes a group in the Colossian church that is even using the Risen Christ as an armor of protection against what they see as this wicked world, which they hope to escape. Some are claiming special status and superiority because of heavenly visions they claim they’ve had. (Col. 2:16-19)
Paul, by contrast, doesn’t start with the sins of the world and his despair about it. Instead, he starts with the Risen Christ, the source of joy. He tells them and us that our resurrection life has begun and is begun, unable to reach perfection in these bodies and in progress within these bodies. This is an announcement that tells us our lives aren’t our own. “Your lives are hidden with Christ in God.” (Col. 3:1)
Maybe this is the vulnerability that gives way to joy the Risen Christ brings. This is a vulnerability that keeps us from claiming salvation as an achievement, that lays its armor down and can embrace the joy of a life hidden with Christ. We can ruin a good Easter outfit when we put armor on top of it.
Armor doesn’t make us less afraid, and it can only work as a shield of fear, not as a shield against it. Fear can only set an agenda with things of death, and those weapons ultimately can’t win, no matter how creative they may be (i.e. keeping women out of pulpits, against the gospel narratives; or keeping legislators out of state houses for telling the truth?). None of these things will make anyone less afraid.
“Your lives are hidden with Christ in God.” As with Christ, we aren’t meant to stay in tombs, nor are we meant to hold on to anything better left in tombs. Perhaps its our own resurrection more than Christ’s that seems less plausible to us and incites more fear in us.
Are you ever like Alice, when she has tea with the White Queen? You may recall when the White Queen says that her age is “one hundred and one, five months and a day”, Alice says: “I can't believe THAT!” When the White Queen tells Alice to try, Alice says: “There’s no use trying . . . one CAN’T believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Today’s message is both extravagantly broad and intimately personal. It’s an announcement with an earthquake. It’s an announcement that either says a world is collapsing or a world is beginning, or maybe both. Perhaps one impossible thing- the change being made in us- is more than enough to contemplate before breakfast.
What is our choice: A fear that doubles down with armor to protect against this impossible news? Or the fear that is able to run ahead in wonder and joy of what’s to come and can be imagined even now?
Fear can knock us down like dead men, or send us running with joy toward the Risen Christ, to be like the women hurried away from the tomb after receiving this news: “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised.” (Matt. 28:5-6) The crucifixion can’t be undone, and Jesus still bears those wounds. But those wounds doesn’t tell the end of his story, and in him, your wounds, your sins, your fears, and even your death can’t tell the end of your story.
So the women ran to tell the disciples – not knowing what all this meant, and so much of it made little sense. Yet they were seized with the joy that was even harder to explain, and it sent them running to announce these impossible things – things they now know are not only possible, but real.
Without fear? Get real!
With fear AND great joy? Strange as it may sound, with the Risen Christ, even that’s possible. We’re invited to find out for ourselves, running with fear and joy and heeding the life-giving call we’ve received. That’s where the Risen Christ meets us- or truer to the Greek word in this passage, he joins and accompanies us. “It is I”, he tells us. “Don’t be afraid. I have work for you to do, and news for you to share. Tell others I will meet them. And stay alert – I’ll keep meeting you, too.”
Maybe that's the most vulnerable part of this news, after all: this is a joy that meets us and gives us a task, as much as it gives us hope and meaning to our lives. That's what makes discipleship an endeavor that's never entirely fearless. We don't do it entirely out of will or for the sake of achievement. We do it out of joy for news that has reached us, and we have the choice of what to do with this joy.
I can't describe this as well as I think poet Christian Wiman does when he describes the poets elusive task of capturing our moments of joy with words:
"Joy: that durable, inexhaustible, essential, inadequate word. That something in the soul that makes one able to claim again the word soul. That sensation more exalting than happiness, less graspable than hope, though both of these feelings are implicated, challenged, changed. That seed of being that can bud … so that faith is suddenly not something one need contemplate, struggle for, or even have, really, but is simply there, as the world is there. There is no way to plan for, much less conjure, such an experience. One can only try to make oneself fit to feel the moment when it comes, and let it carry you where it will.”
So I've learned and bear witness today. I present my tie as an exhibit! There’s a story there.
Perhaps to my daughter’s embarrassment, I have worn this same tie every Easter for more than twenty years. I vividly remember a particular Easter when I felt the earth crumble- or rather, I had felt the earth quaking around me for months, after I realized my long-held career plans wouldn’t happen after I had a third unsuccessful attempt at the bar exam. It was time to discern what else I could do with a law degree, but I had no idea what I was to do.
So, I brought all of those fears and uncertainties with me to church one Easter Sunday, an Easter day when I wore this tie. We sang those words I knew so well: “Made like him, like him we rise.” All of a sudden, a joy came over me, a joy for which I still have no adequate words to describe or explain. It was a joy that I could only feel before I could analyze it or find 100 reasons to avoid it (a miracle in itself!). I knew this was the truth that told me who I am, not my success or failure. With that joy I felt singing Mr. Wesley’s words, I knew I had to live the rest of my life being faithful to that joy, not knowing where it would take me, and having a fear that was almost as strong as the joy.
Be careful if this ever happens to you. You could be going to seminary in middle age and doing something you said you would never do!
I’d like to tell you from that moment, all fear was gone, or that even at this moment, I have no fear as I speak to you. I can’t tell you what it’s like to live without fear.
I can tell you every morning when I wake up, I look in the mirror and see and believe an impossible thing. I can tell you what it’s like to be afraid- and, at the same time, to run with great joy, with a call to announce the good news that has been given to you and you have felt in your bones, because it has brought you to life.
I can tell you about a message I heard this morning. It said: “Go and tell a group of disciples at Union Avenue these words: He is risen. Go and tell others. Jesus goes ahead of you.”
So, I heard that news and- well, I didn’t run. I do live nine miles away! I even had to allow more time to get here, because the park was closed.
I even came here with a little fear- and with joy.
With great joy.
1. William J. and Gloria Gaither, “Because He Lives”, copyright 1971, William J. Gaither.
2. Brene Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Lead, and Parent (Gotham Books, 2012), 118, 121-122.
3. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (Oxford University Press, 2009), 177.
4. Christian Wiman, “Still Wilderness”, The American Scholar (Autumn 2017), 50.