The Second Sunday of Easter Year C

Easter 2C April 28, 2019 I had a parishioner at a previous church who told me that she decided to give up fear for Lent. After the 40 days were over, she confessed to me that it had been the hardest thing that she had ever done and that it had made her aware how much fear she felt in her life on a daily basis. Now this parishioner wasn’t an especially anxious or fearful person in my experience, so after she told me that, I started paying attention to all the times in a given day that I felt afraid. It’s not something most of us pay attention to, and I, too, was surprised at how often I feel afraid in any given day. Most of us just ignore it, squash it down or even let the fear drive us in ways that we may not be attentive to. But what happens when we are honest about the fears we experience, when we face them squarely in the face, and then refuse to hold on to them or let them drive us? Our gospel reading for today picks up immediately after last Sunday’s gospel reading leaves off. It is still Easter day. Mary Magdalene has discovered the empty tomb and hurried back to tell the disciples. Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” have raced back to verify that the tomb is, in fact, empty, and Mary Magdalene has an encounter with both angels and the risen Christ who she initially mistakes as the gardener. She recognizes the risen Christ when he calls her by name, and he sends her to be the “apostle to the apostles”—to share the good news of his resurrection with the rest of the disciples. So we assume they all hear the news that Jesus is risen from the dead. Later that same day, John tells us, the disciples are huddled together in a locked house, “for fear of the Jews” when Jesus appears to them. But Thomas misses out because he isn’t there with them at the time. And so when they later tell him they have seen the Lord, Thomas says that he is going to need to see him, too, to believe it. A whole week goes by, and this time, Thomas is with the rest, and Jesus shows up again and gives Thomas what he needs to join the rest in their belief. Here are some things that jumped out at me from this reading this week. First, in John’s gospel, belief is never a noun; it is always a verb, an action. Second, something I’ve never noticed before is that Thomas isn’t there at that first appearance because he isn’t afraid. The others are huddled together behind locked doors out of fear, but Thomas is out and about, doing his own thing. And that’s the thing to remember about Thomas: he has been fearless all along. Earlier in John’s gospel, when the authorities are threatening to kill Jesus, Thomas is the one who says, well, we should go with him, so we can all die together. Thomas isn’t afraid to make his needs known, to ask for what he needs to believe in the resurrection—both from the others and from Jesus himself. And he is unafraid to wait, dwelling in the unknown and the uncertainty, and to show up again, a week later with all of his doubts, to see if Jesus will show up once again. Thomas is not afraid to doubt. Thomas is not afraid. What would it be like to give up fear for Easter? What would it be like to show up, how you really are, doubtful, uncertain, afraid, and to allow all of that to be transformed by encounters with the Risen Christ who is loose and at work in the world? What would it be like for us to give up fear for Easter as individuals? What would it be like for us to give up fear for Easter as a church, the body of the risen Christ in the world? Yesterday, I read a quote from the writer Anne Lamott. She wrote, “They say that courage is fear that has said its prayers.” This week (and if you are bold like Thomas for the 40 days still left in Easter), your invitation is to give up fear; to acknowledge it, when it steals upon you, and to release it, let it be transformed by God through prayer into courage, choosing instead to believe, to act in the power of God’s love made manifest in Jesus’s resurrection.