Fear, Peace, and Safety

The Gospel for the second week of Easter is always the same, John’s account of the evening on the first Easter (Jn. 19:19-31).  And every year I have a hard time getting beyond its opening words:  “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”   (Jn. 19:19)  Despite all that had happened, the doors were locked out of fear.  Fear, it seems to me, is the great enemy of the resurrection.

It is odd.  Fear ought to be the thing most defeated by Easter.  If Easter defeats death, the source of perhaps our greatest fear, what have we to fear anymore?  Yet, even at the beginning it was not so.

We humans are just fearful creatures.  We know we live in a world with much to fear.  Violence erupts around us in horrifying ways.  Our pursuit of wealth leads us to fear not having enough in the midst of being abundantly provided for.  Pride provokes the fear of being found out to be what we really are.  Fear leads us to choose the tomb, which at least is known, over the resurrection, which pushes us into a world we have never known.

And although Easter ought to be the antidote to all that fear, it is not.  By the evening of Easter Day, we find ourselves again locked behind closed doors.  His own rising to life again notwithstanding and the announcement of his own resurrection notwithstanding, Jesus simply refuses to leave us in our fear, as much as we might hope he would.  Jesus calls us forth from behind the doors, even when we have them most tightly locked up.

To begin with he offers peace.  “Peace be with you,” he said three times in the passage.  Peace.  Peace.  Peace.  But peace does not end there.  The only real solution to our fear is the response to peace.  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (v. 21).

The sending is related to the peace.  Our peace is not in staying safely tucked away behind the locked doors.  It is in being sent.  It is in getting out there.   We aren’t going to find out it’s safe out there until we take a chance to find out.

Peace be with you indeed.
 

Peace,