EASTER II (B)
The doors
of the house where the disciples had met were locked for
fear of the Jews. – John 20: 19
Fear is a
terrible thing. We all have our fears. In spite of being
incessantly distracted by a frivolous, profit-driven
media that squeezes every last drop out of the latest
celebrity scandal du jour, We fear the real growing
threat of terrorism, Iran’s potential for nuclear
warfare, the seduction of our children, the vulgarity of
civil discourse. We fear increasing taxes, identity
theft, unsafe streets, loss of health & income, aging,
dying. And we fear matters of the heart.
A man named
Janez Rus feared punishment for his wartime activity in
support of the Nazis. He was a young shoemaker when he
went into hiding at his sister’s farmhouse in June 1945.
He was found 32 years later. He said he used to cry when
he heard happy voices outside. He didn’t even dare go to
his own mother’s funeral. Throughout those years he
never left the house, a victim of his own fears.
It is also
possible to fear God’s love & all its demands. A famous
therapist named Rollo May, recovering from a nervous
breakdown, went, even though he was a non-believer, to
visit Mt. Athos, a peninsula of Greece inhabited
exclusively by monks. He happened to arrive when the
monks were celebrating the Greek Orthodox Easter. The
ceremony was thick with symbolism, thick with beauty.
Icons were everywhere. Incense hung in the air. At the
height of that service, the priest gave everyone present
three Easter eggs, wonderfully decorated & wrapped in a
veil. “Christos
Anesti!” he said,
“Christ is risen!” And the people, including
non-believer Rollo May, responded, “He is indeed.” May
writes, “I was seized then by a moment of spiritual
reality: What would it mean for our world if He
had
truly risen? We too fear it might be true & what would
that demand of us?
We fear intimacy,
& we fear betrayal & being made of fool of, of not
fitting, or society’s worst sin: we fear not feeling
good about oneself, looking good. And so in many ways we
withdraw, take no risks, & hide behind the closed doors
of our own making, pretending to be cool, sophisticated,
life of the party. But it’s all a façade. We’re
afraid. As Bette Midler sang in the movie,
The Rose,
“It’s the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to
dance / It’s the dream afraid of waking that never takes
a chance.”
Fear. We are
looking for someone to walk through the doors we’ve
closed & call us out of our fears, someone who
understands because they’ve been there. What’s the
Gospel point of all this? The disciples were like Janez
Rus: hiding in fear behind locked doors, disfigured with
their own betrayals & cowardice. Now notice, Jesus
appears in their midst with His wounds! Jesus feels that
if He can appear before them disfigured, they will let
Him back into their disfigured lives.
Are we
getting the message? When it hurts too much to hope,
when life has wounded us, when faith is exhausted, know
that the risen Jesus with disfiguring wounds is waiting
to get into our disfigured & fearful lives & call us out
of our fears.
Jesus got His wounds
on Good Friday so that, now being like us, we might let
Him in on Easter Day. He’s willing to come through the
doors we’ve used to shut Him out, letting us know He
understands where we’re coming from & that He can give
us peace & wholeness,
So even if you can’t or
don’t feel like praying, go apart & simply repeat the
last three words of the Bible, “Come, Lord Jesus!” Give
your wounds to the wounded Lord. AMEN!
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