On Christ and Fear

 

On Christ and Fear

April 24, 2024

Next Sunday, April 27, 2025, is the second Sunday of Easter. Or at least for us western Christians it is. The Orthodox celebrate Easter on a different day, so next Sunday isn’t that for them, but never mind. For us it is. And for churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary or, indeed some other lectionaries as well, that means it is “Thomas Sunday.” As much as I might like it if that Sunday were named for me, it isn’t of course. It’s called Thomas Sunday because every year on the first Sunday after Easter the gospel reading is the story of Doubting Thomas from chapter 20 of the Gospel of John. That story has it that on Easter Sunday, in the evening, the disciples, or at least most of them, are gathered in a room behind a locked door. Thomas is not there. The risen Christ appears to them, locked doors be damned. The first thing he says to his disciples is: “Peace.” Some other stuff follows that doesn’t matter for my purposes here.

Some time later, the disciples who had seen the Jesus tell Thomas that they have seen the Lord. Thomas, who, like me, is a twin (so maybe this Sunday is named after me after all?) says something like “Yeah. Sure. I don’t think so. Unless I see his wounds and put my hand in his side, I won’t believe that he was really there.”

So, the following Sunday, the disciples are again gathered behind a locked door. This time Thomas is with them. Again Christ appears among them. Again he says to them, “Peace.” Christ says to Thomas see my wounds and put your hand in my side. Do not doubt, but believe. People often assume that Thomas does reach out and touch Jesus at that point, but, actually, he doesn’t. He just acknowledges Jesus as Lord. He apparently saw Jesus’ crucifixion wounds, but he doesn’t reach out and touch them.

The author of John almost certainly told this story, which appears nowhere else, to tell his community to believe in Jesus, whatever that means, without having seen him. For, of course, none of them had ever seen him, John having been written at least six decades after Jesus’ death. Certainly, none of us has ever seen Jesus, at least not in the way people who saw him during his life or after his resurrection before he departed this earth did. So sure, believe in Jesus even though you’ve never seen him.

There is, however, another point that this story makes that is, if anything, even more important for us today. Consider this. In this story, the disciples gather behind locked doors because they are afraid. John says they’re afraid of “the Jews,” but that’s anti-Jewish hogwash or a metaphor that mentions a different farm animal. They were afraid, but they weren’t afraid of the Jews. They were afraid of the Romans. No Jews ever crucified anyone, but the Romans did it all the time. No Jews crucified Jesus. The Romans did. Jesus’ disciples had every reason to fear that the Romans would come after them next. Crossan may say the Romans didn’t execute the followers of a popular movement leader if the movement was nonviolent, which the Jesus movement certainly was. But these disciples, of course, had never read or heard Crossan. If I’d been one of those disciples, I’d have been afraid too.

It is precisely in the midst of their fear that the risen Christ appears to his disciples. It is precisely in the midst of their fear that the risen Christ says to them: “Peace.” Certainly, the disciples were feeling anything but peace. Fear is not peaceful. Fear is not serene. Fear is disturbing. Fear is upsetting. Fear is no fun at all. And Jesus says to his friends: “Peace.”

Now, we don’t live under the threat of Roman crucifixion the way Jesus’ disciples did or at least thought they did, which amounts to the same thing for our purposes here. We do, nonetheless, live in a time in which one of the things a great many of us feel is fear. Our fear is caused by the presidential administration of Donald J. Trump. It is beyond comprehension how this country could make Trump president once much less twice like we have; but we have, and we have to live with the fact that we have.

Donald Trump personally, along with the obviously incompetent, unqualified people he has put in charge of essentially every sector of the federal government, is doing a great many things that create fear in enormous numbers of Americans. We needn’t rehearse all of the horrors of the Trump administration here. They are well known, or at least they are well known by all Americans who have not sold their souls to Donald Trump for the false sense of security and promise of prosperity that Trump’s MAGA movement gives them. I’ll just say this much: I can’t speak for anyone but myself, so I’ll just speak of myself here. I fear the loss of everything good thing this country has always claimed that it stands for, never mind that those things have never been as fully realized as most Americans like to think they have been. Still, this country stands for democracy. Representative government. The rule of law. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. Freedom of academic inquiry. Freedom of assembly. Freedom of religion. I fear losing the Social Security income my wife and I depend on for our ability to sustain life. I fear losing my constitutional right to speak my mind including the right to criticize the government and to point out all of its failings. I live in fear like I never thought I ever would in what claims to be the freest nation in the world, and it’s all due to Donald Trump. I feel called to resist Donald Trump in any way I can, though always nonviolently, and that sense call definitely comes with a sense of fear.

And in all of that, I believe that Jesus comes to me and to all people and says “Peace.” And I also wonder: What can “Peace” possibly mean to us in these frightening times? To answer that question we have so start by considering what Jesus’ “Peace” does not mean. The peace Jesus bids us to find does not mean that all of our problems go away. It doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen to us and to our loved ones. It doesn’t mean we won’t get sick. It doesn’t mean we won’t die. It doesn’t mean that the Trump administration will magically disappear, as wonderful as it would be if it did. We will still have to deal with all of those things standing in the peace Jesus offers us.

What we won’t have to deal with is existential fear. Existential fear is fear about our very existence, and it is much more than fear about this life. It is fear about the nature of our being. It is fear about what will happen to us in this life, and it is also fear about any posited next life. It is the fear of meaninglessness, that our lives and the lives of everyone else may, in the end, mean nothing. It is fear of falling into nonbeing. It is fear that this life is all there is, that it is all we’re ever going to have. It is fear of not having a meaningful connection with the ultimate reality that people of faith call God.

Existential fear is much deeper than ordinary fear, than fear about our personal safety or the safety of our loved ones. It probably operates at the subconscious level in most people. Most people probably don’t even know they have it. Which doesn’t mean they don’t have it. It means that it is functioning in and from the unconscious and is most likely expressed in unhealthy ways. We must all deal with it whether we know it or not.

The peace to which Jesus calls us, the peace that Jesus offers us, is how we deal with it. That peace is a peace much deeper than any mere worldly peace. It is a peace deep within us that tells us that no matter how unsafe we feel, no matter how unsafe we may be in a worldly sense, we are in fact existentially safe with God. It is a peace that looks to the cross of Jesus Christ and says that no matter how Godforsaken we may feel, we are never Godforsaken at all. Never. Ever. It is a peace grounded in scripture passages like Romans 8:38-39, which assures us that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is the peace of the martyr. Not of one who seeks martyrdom, for seeking martyrdom is morally and theologically indefensible. It is the peace of one with the courage to enter the most difficult and dangerous earthly situations for the gospel of Jesus Christ aware of the risk and willing to take it on because of their deep awareness of the unfailing love and grace of God, lost and grace with them and with everyone.

Consider the situation of the disciples to whom the risen Christ said, “Peace.” They were terrified. They were hiding behind a locked door. Once they went out into the world, they all engaged in the highly risky work of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ against the power of Rome. We have no historical sources on what happened to them, but the Christian tradition says they all died as martyrs for the gospel. It says that both Peter, who was there when Jesus said, “Peace,” and Paul, who wasn’t, died in Rome. Thomas himself, the doubting one, may have gone as far as India to spread the good news of Jesus Christ, something that could hardly have been safe for him.

Those men, and probably women too, who heard Jesus say, “Peace” knew the dangers. They knew they were risking their lives when they proclaimed a good news as anti-imperial, as anti-Roman as the good news of Jesus was—and is. Yet they went. They took the risk, and they paid the price. I’m sure it’s not that they no longer felt fear; but, then, courage is not the lack of fear, it is ability to act despite one’s fear. The inner peace necessary for one to act in dangerous circumstances despite one’s fear is precisely the peace to which the risen Christ called his disciples and to which he calls us.

I don’t know when or even if I will be called to act in physically dangerous circumstances as I resist the fascism of Donald Trump and his administration. I am an old man, 78 years old. I have long thought of myself as more of a writer and preacher than as an activist doing work out in the world. I may never need to put my life in danger in resistance to Trump. But I have to ask myself. We all have to ask ourselves: If we do have that necessity, will we have the courage to act? Put more theologically, will we have the inner, existential peace that Jesus offers us, the peace that may well be all we have that can enable us to act? To cause good trouble? Truly to stand up and speak out for truth, justice, and peace against Trump’s lies, injustices, and attacks on our peace? I like to think that my answer is yes, I would have that peace and therefore would have that courage. Yet I also know that I can never know for sure that I would until I’m in a dangerous situation that requires me to act despite the danger.  I like to trust that my trust in God would be strong enough so that I could do what needed to be done to advance peace and justice in the world. What do you think about yourself? Do you have enough of the peace Jesus brings to do what needs to be done for justice and peace? I certainly can’t answer that question. If anyone can answer that question, it’s you. So let’s all ask it of ourselves and hope we come to the correct answers.