Fear

What are you afraid of?  What are your deepest, darkest fears?  Are you afraid of deadly diseases like cancer?  Are you afraid of terrorists and the possibility of experiencing a tragedy?  Maybe you fear rejection.  Or maybe your ultimate fear is the possibility of losing loved ones.  Could it be that your job situation is unpredictable and insecure?  Maybe what weighs on you are vocational and financial concerns.  The fear of failure can leave a person paralyzed.  Do anxieties delay your sleep and wake you up at night? 

Fear, anxiety, angst, phobias of various kinds, and all sorts of trepidation have taken root in our society and in our homes.  Whether running for your life from a bully at school or fighting for your life in the face of a dreaded disease, we’ve all experienced horror of one sort or another.  Fear manifests itself in a variety of ways.  It might visit us in moments of panic or terror, or it might lodge itself in the recesses of our mind, filling our days with a dull sense of dread.  Fear can sometimes be healthy, but for most of us, most of the time, fear is something that we know we must face, but we would rather avoid.  And if we do not face our fears effectively, fear can be crippling – debilitating.


On the weekend of his passion, Jesus’ disciples had good reason to be afraid.  They were in danger.  They had staked their lives on the hope that Jesus was the Messiah, the one who would redeem and restore Israel.  But on that not-so-good Friday, their hopes and dreams came crashing down like a house of cards on shifting sand.  It seemed they hadn’t so much as built their house on the rock, but on a sink hole.  And as their aspirations seemingly vanished into thin air, they feared that not only had they backed the wrong horse in the race, but that their own races had been run.  They must have felt that at any moment, the Jewish authorities could barge into their hide-away and lead them to a cruel death like their master had experienced just days before.
  

Let’s pick up the story in John 20:19-23: “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.’  After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.  Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’  When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’” 


Though they had heard rumors of resurrection, that evening, the first day of the week, the first day of God’s new creation, they remained hidden away behind locked doors.  Their security measures may have kept the hostile Jewish religious leaders at bay, but it couldn’t keep out their resurrected Lord and Savior.  Jesus came to them and stood among them. 

There’s no doubt that this would not have been the last moment that the disciples experienced fear, but they would never have to experience fear in quite the same way.  Fear is a part of the human experience – it’s as natural as joy or sadness or exhilaration.  Encountering the risen Jesus will not remove all our fears, but these encounters give us the strength and courage to face our fears.  The world is still a scary place and we are not immune to disappointment, discouragement, and doubt.  But we do not have to face life’s dilemmas alone.  As he stood with them on that Sunday evening, Jesus stands with us in the middle of our fear and says, “Peace be with you.”  - Shay