Our readings speak about fear and moving beyond fear. The first reading recalled the Jewish experience of being slaves in Egypt. Like all slaves, they knew fear. They knew the fear of being oppressed – of having no say at all about your life – the fear of having only the most dismal life ahead of you. Yet they moved beyond fear – as they came to recognize the power of God releasing them from every bondage. God can do that! They moved beyond fear by moving through it.
The second reading from the Letter to the
Hebrews reminded us that Abraham and Sarah had their fears. They feared leaving their home to live among
strangers. They feared bringing new life
into the world at their advanced age; they were old people afraid of a new
life. But they too moved beyond their
fear and learned to become risk-takers.
God can do that! Daring to risk
moved them beyond fear by moving them through it.
In the gospel Jesus begins by repeating
something he so often said to his disciples: “Do not be afraid!” The most repeated words in the whole
Bible! Jesus does not want his disciples
to live in fear. He wants us to move
beyond our fears – especially the fears that keep us at a distance from one
another. Like our fear of commitment –
and our fear of not being accepted.
These fears keep us from risking to invest ourselves in the lives of
others. They isolate us. Our loneliness comes from these fears.
There’s an underlying fear we have to
address. It’s our fear of dying. We are disciples of Jesus – and we are afraid
of death. Jesus feared death. He sweated and shivered as he moved
deliberately toward his death. But our
fear of death makes us run from its inevitable reality. We avoid talk of death. Even at home in our families – fear isolates
us into a dumb silence before death and dying.
Into our dumb silence Jesus, our Risen Lord,
yells: “Do not be afraid! Do not be
afraid even of death!” From the far side
of death Jesus, the Resurrected One, assures us: We never just die. Rather – we die into new life. In our dying there is always a birthing. When you think of it, in childbirth a woman
loses her child by giving it birth. God
always gives us new life.
Christians call this dying into new life the Paschal Mystery. It’s the basic truth we see in the life and
death of Jesus. And it’s the truth we
can see in our own lives. A man was
dying of cancer. He was a big, tough guy
– welder. He was not dying easily. In intense pain, his body wasting away, he
still refused to die. He lay there
clinging to life. One day his eldest son
sat by the bedside, watching his dad’s suffering. He squeezed his hand and said: “Dad, die for
God’s sake! Let go! It’s got to be better there than here.” Almost immediately his dad became calm and
within minutes he died.
The words his son spoke were paschal words,
Christ’s words, words that trust God enough to be able to die into Him –
knowing that new life – deeper, fuller life will be born in the dying.
Let us learn such trust. This is true Christian faith – the faith that
overcomes the world. It is just such
faith that frees us from fear and allows us to live and even to die in
gratitude.
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