Be Not Afraid

“Be not affrighted. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen, he is not here: Behold the place where they laid him.” Mark’s gospel offers simple words that describe the utterly unexpected yet utter reality of human experience. The women come to the tomb of Jesus seeking his body so that they might anoint it with burying spices. They find the stone rolled away from the door of the tomb and “a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe.” The details are precise. He tells them not to be afraid or amazed and acknowledges why they have come and tells them that “he is risen.” Such is the beginning of the early accounts of the Resurrection. The dominant message is “be not afraid.” Yet, the so-called short ending of Mark’s gospel, ending at verse eight of chapter sixteen, ends with the words: “they were afraid.” Fears ‘r us, too.

 

Out of the horror and radical injustice of Christ’s Crucifixion comes Resurrection. What does it mean? The Easter accounts of the Resurrection show us the process of learning its meaning, the dawning awareness of the radical life of God made visible in Christ lifted up on the Cross and now lifted out of the grave. “He is risen. He is not here,” the women are told. Something has changed and something changes for them and for us. Be not afraid.

 

The Resurrection reveals the truth of Christ’s passion. Holy Week in its concentration on the accounts of the passion would be impossible to contemplate apart from the Resurrection which is its underlying truth. To paraphrase Sophocles, “all that we see here is God,” in and through the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. Heraclitus’ insight that “the way up and the way down are one and the same” provides perhaps a way to enter into this mystery, the radical mystery of life. The way to the principle, to God, and the way from God, is nothing less and nothing more than God himself in his own self-complete motion and life and that motion and life in us. What is new at Easter is the making known of that eternal truth and motion for us and in us. We are allowed to see the process of how that idea and truth is grasped and known and how it sets us in motion towards one another.

 

There is, as the philosopher and theologian, Peter Kreeft observes, the ancient fear of death (think Gilgamesh), the medieval fear of Hell, and the modern fear of meaninglessness. In other words, the Resurrection speaks to all our fears and uncertainties and, perhaps, especially for us in our culture of fear and anxiety with the constant messaging about impending catastrophes and endless diagnoses of fear and anxiety among young people. Such messaging feeds on itself and creates a climate of contagion. Yet the message of Easter is one which complements a fundamental insight that belongs to many religions and philosophies. It is the idea that the infinite life of God is greater than us. Love, as the Song of Songs puts it, is “stronger than death.” Easter makes visible the powerful idea that God is greater than sin and evil, greater than suffering and death.

 

As such, perhaps, just perhaps, the Easter message speaks to adolescent angst and its counterpart in parental anxieties about you and your future. The Resurrection simply points out that you are more though not less than your bodies; more though not less than the circumstances and confusions and anxieties of your experience, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat notwithstanding; that you are more though not less than even your sins and follies. For all of those things which contribute to the culture of fear and anxiety presuppose what they ultimately deny and negate: life itself. Here is the triumph of life over death, of love over sin and evil. It is the making known of what is eternal and everlasting, now and forever, of what is necessarily prior to all of our confusions. This is the radical meaning of all spiritual pilgrimage.

 

There are the fears that paralyze us and imprison us in ourselves and there is the fear that sets us in motion in freedom and joy. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” is the biblical phrase that captures the latter. Fear, here, means the awe, the amazement, and the wonder of God himself. “Be not affrighted” speaks to that sense of amazement and wonder. That is what Mark is getting at in this Chapel reading. Our fears and anxieties bury us in ourselves. We are deader than dead in our obsessive narcissisms. The Resurrection offers a counter to our fears by awakening us to the greater reality of God upon whom all being and knowing radically depend. The Resurrection opens us out to the radical life of God in Christ Crucified and now risen from the dead. Death and Resurrection are the fundamental patterns of spiritual pilgrimage. It means dying to ourselves in order to live for God and for one another. Radical life indeed!

 

The Resurrection is the strongest possible affirmation of creation, of the goodness of the natural world, and thus the counter to the pseudo-religions of our day in their gnostic flight from nature and the world into the illusions of the disembodied self. The Resurrection is the strongest possible affirmation of human individuality and personality which can only be found in our life with God and with one another and not in our isolation. It opens us out to the mystery of ourselves as found in the mystery of God. But how? By Death and Resurrection. Such is the meaning of the idea of ‘the death of death,’ that death is changed from being the terminus, the end of things, and has been made the transitus, the way to what has ultimate meaning in itself and for us. Thus, the Resurrection signals the real resilience of character. You are more than your fears and anxieties. Be not afraid.