Fear and Great Joy
“Fear and Great Joy” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed. It just makes be happy to hear you say it. Thank you. There is so much that is so good about Easter Sunday all the ways and all the people who observe it at Creekside. From the preparations for Love Feast to the kids here for the Egg Hunt, to the SonRise breakfast — these are all meaningful parts of the season for me. It can be a challenge to carve out space for contemplation and study and sermon preparation when there is so much going on, but I was able to sit down one afternoon last week to re-read and consider each of the four gospel’s accounts of Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion, and the resurrection on Easter Sunday. This is a helpful exercise; as you know, the gospels vary somewhat in when and for whom they were written, and a comparative reading can be revealing, and often answers some questions.
This morning you heard the Easter story from Matthew’s gospel. I want to focus in on some specifics, but here is some general information: Matthew is the first gospel we come to in order the New Testament — it’s the first book of the New Testament — but it was written later than, and borrows from, the gospel of Mark. Jesus had a disciple named Matthew, a tax collector, who has been named as the author of this gospel, although it was written between 80 and 90 AD. So it is unlikely — although not impossible — that Jesus’ disciple was the author. What we know for sure from the text itself is that Matthew was written for a Jewish-Christian audience, and of all the gospel writers, Matthew is the hardest on the Jewish leaders — the Pharisees and the Temple leaders who sought Jesus’ death. This comes out in the Crucifixion account — the Roman governor Pilate advocates for Jesus’ release and washes his hands of the whole thing, leaving the Jewish leaders to foment a riot calling for Jesus to be crucified.
Here is the burning theological question I was wrestling with this week: maybe this question has occurred to you, too. We’re told that women got up early in the morning to go to the tomb with spices to anoint Jesus body, yet every single gospel mentions that there was a large stone rolled in front of the tomb. How did the women think they were going to move that stone in order to get to Jesus body? Not one gospel mentions them taking a crow bar along with the spices. Matthew — and only Matthew — says that the Pharisees asked for a Roman guard to keep Jesus’ disciples from sneaking in and taking the body. It’s unlikely those guard were going to help the Marys roll the stone away from the tomb, but then, Matthew doesn’t say they were bringing spices, so maybe they were just going to see the tomb.
In any case, God solves the problem of the stone for them, because there’s a great earthquake, an angel comes down and rolls the stone away, and the guards become catatonic with fear, leaving the women to talk with the angel, who begins, reasonably enough, but saying, “Do not be afraid.” Of course they’re still afraid, because you don’t have earthquakes and angels every day, and despite the prophecies, no one really imagined Jesus being raised from the dead as a realistic possibility.
I want to focus on verse 8, because I find it intriguing and relevant to my life, and I hope to yours. The angel tells the women not to be afraid because Jesus who was crucified has been raised from the dead and is not here. He is waiting in Galilee, and they are to go tell the disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead. And verse 8 says So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell the disciples. It’s the phrase “fear and great joy” which captured my attention and made me re-read this section several times. This isn’t an either or, it’s a both and: they didn’t feel fear which then changed to great joy, they had fear and great joy at the same time. I was curious about this combination of fear and joy, and wondered if it is reserved for something divine and miraculous like the resurrection of Jesus, or if I could think of instances in my own life where I felt fear and great joy at the same time.
It turns out that it isn’t such an unlikely combination after all. In fact, I could think of a number of instances, and perhaps you can too. When I was younger, roller coasters were cause for fear and great joy, then they became cause for great fear and joy, and now they’re just fear, so I’ve stopped. But there are some more significant life events which have been the times of fear and great joy. When I got married, I felt fear and great joy. And when I found out I was pregnant with our first child, and every child after that. When my husband began medical residency, when we moved to a new community, when I started seminary studies, when our daughters were expecting babies, when I was called to serve as a pastor at Creekside. I’m sure you can think of your own instances of fear and great joy. Because unless I’m way out of the norm — we can argue this later — fear and great joy is the natural response to letting go of something familiar and looking toward the promise of something better. There is fear in letting go of the familiar; maybe some joy there too, if what you’re accustomed to has not been great. But for most of us, we settle at a level which is at least comfortable, if not necessarily happy, and we don’t give that up without some misgivings and trepidation. Even if I love that person I’m planning to marry, what if I’m not a good partner? What if things go bad later? What then? In the same way, even if a new thing sounds like cause for great joy: we’re going to parents! Nobody really knows how that I going to shake out. It might be difficult. I might not be good at it. I can’t change my mind now. You can see how fear can creep in, even when there’s great joy.
So let’s consider these women who were coming to the tomb that morning. Let’s assume they weren’t bringing spices; they knew there would be a Roman guard who would keep them at a distance, but they just needed to be there to grieve. They had sat opposite this tomb late on Friday afternoon and had watched Joseph of Arimathea lay Jesus’ body inside before they had to get home before sunset and the start of Shabat. They may have felt some fear, but I imagine it was mostly grief and despair. The Romans weren’t interested in arresting Jewish women, and the Temple leaders would be confident that without Jesus, his movement would fall apart. They were already coming unraveled — Peter had denied Jesus, the disciples had fled, and only the women were there to watch the burial. And what could women do?
The fear that morning was not because Jesus was dead — Jesus’ life was over, they had seen it end on the cross and seen his lifeless body laid in the tomb. The fear was because of the earthquake and the angel and the empty tomb and the possibility that Jesus was alive. What was that going to mean? They really might be in trouble with the Romans and the Pharisees. Jesus dead was a cause for disillusionment and great sorrow, but Jesus alive? That is cause for fear and great joy — and a good measure of breathless, bewildered happiness. Run and tell the disciples — we have news of great joy! We’re sure it’s true, but we’re not sure what is going to mean for us. Is Jesus staying with us? Will the Romans try to kill him again? Can the Romans kill him again? What else did Jesus say that we didn’t pay much attention to at the time which might really happen now?
The resurrected Christ is cause for great joy — I hope that’s at least part of the reason you are celebrating worship here today. But Christ’s resurrection demands — demands — that we let go of some familiar, comfortable things. Like our rational minds: there is no medical explanation or precedent for this event; we might have to let go of our assumptions about how God works, or who is going to be the first to hear the message, or what Jesus is going to do next, or what in the world is the world going to look like if we believe this is true? What is going to be asked of us if we believe this is true? How do we make sense of what just happened? What just happened? What?
Jesus’ resurrection changes so many things, but here is one thing which doesn’t change — the question of discipleship: what do I have to leave behind in order to follow Jesus? It’s the question we had to ask when we considered the path to the cross and humility and death. It’s also the question we should be asking when we are running away from the tomb with fear and great joy: what do I have to leave behind in order to follow Jesus? We have been promised that on the other side of suffering there is great joy, but even suffering can become familiar and comfortable and its own kind of security. The question of Easter is what does it take to believe in new life, and are we willing to risk it? At minimum, we are being asked to suspend our disbelief, give up any certainty we had about what God was going to do, and admit that the whole thing is out of our control. These are realities we might have had to come to terms with anyway, but reckoning with the resurrection forces our hand: are we with the folks who are grieving from the security of their homes on Sunday morning, or are we with the folks who are experiencing fear and great joy, heading off to Galilee because that’s where we were told Jesus will be.Christ is risen, indeed. Let’s go and see what happens next. Amen.