Don’t Be Afraid (Matthew 28:1-10; Easter A; April 20, 2014)

Don’t Be Afraid

Matthew 28:1-10
Easter A
April 20, 2014

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

Jesus was dead to begin with, to steal a line from Charles Dickens.  This must be understood from the outset otherwise the story that follows gives rise to no wonder and no joy.  Jesus was dead and the authorities intended that he stay that way. 

So determined were they to keep Jesus dead that they took precautions to make sure that there would not even be a rumor of his being alive.  They posted guards to make sure that the tomb where Jesus was buried would not be tampered with. 

Jesus had challenged the authority of the powers that be in Jerusalem.  The powers had reacted to protect themselves with an act of judicial murder.  The grave was sealed and guarded.  The authorities were safe.  Their power was secure.  They were confident in the strength.  The threat to their power from the Galilean prophet was over, finished, done with, yesterday’s news.  End of story. 

This story is much like countless other stories in the Bible.  Cain, smarting after his offering was rejected and Abel’s was accepted, caught Abel alone and killed him.  So much for Abel.  David, having stolen the wife of Uriah the Hittite, had Uriah killed by Joab his general.  This was the end of the matter of Bathsheba.  Ahab and Jezebel, king and queen of the Northern Kingdom, had Naboth killed so that they could steal his vineyard.  And no one was the wiser.  This is the way that the strong operate.  They think they can get away with anything.  They go straight for what they want.  Then they put together their cover-up and that, they think, is the end of the story.

But that is where our story begins.  It was dawn and Mary of Magdala and the “other” Mary, presumably the mother of James and John, went to the tomb in which Jesus had been buried.  It was a tomb that had never been used before.  Joseph of Arimathea had donated it for Jesus’ burial. 

Of the disciples, only the two women, the two Mary’s, Mary of Magdala and the “other” Mary, kept their wits about them.  They had followed the burial party to Jesus’ tomb and went back at dawn on the first day of the week, wanting “to see the tomb.”

Suddenly there was a great earthquake, caused by one of God’s messengers, an angel, rolling back the stone that had been used to seal the tomb’s entrance.  The angel was clothed in white and its appearance was “like lightning.” 

Now, angels tend to be scary creatures.  At least many people in the Bible tend to react to them with fear.  When, for example, an angel appears to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, early in Luke, Zacharias is terrified.  Likewise when the angel appeared to the shepherds, the shepherds were terrified.  Cornelius the centurion was terrified when an angel appeared to him.  Often the very first thing that the angel says is, “Don’t be afraid.”  And, of course, in most cases it is already too late.

In our story, when the angel appears, the guards are terrified.  They shake like leaves and then they faint.  These men, mind you, are presumably Roman soldiers, loaned to the religious authorities by Pontius Pilate for the purpose of securing the tomb.  They have seen their fair share of battle.  There is not much that fazes them.  But they faint from fear.

But not the women.  They don’t shake.  They don’t fall down and grovel on the ground.  They don’t faint.  Maybe from force of habit, the angel says, “Don’t be afraid.”  The angel shows them the empty tomb and tells them to take the news to the disciples: “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.”

The two Mary’s turn from the tomb and no sooner do they begin to run to tell the news than they run into Jesus.  “Greetings!” he says.  They fall at his feet, but this is not because they are afraid.  It is because this is how they were taught to worship.  In the ancient East worship was not something you did seated.  They did not act out of fear.  But the next thing that Jesus says to them is, “Don’t be afraid.”

These repeated assurances, these commands not to fear, are not responses to their fear at meeting an angel or the risen Christ, as I had originally assumed.  They are the heart of the resurrection message.

Don’t be afraid.  Don’t be afraid.

That’s a tall order.  We’re afraid of a lot of things.  We’re afraid of (in alphabetical order): Alzheimer’s, big government, big money, African Americans, cancer, carbohydrates, cellulite, child abductions, Christian fundamentalists, climate change, conservatives, death, failure, fat, food additives, gun control, guns, immigrants, Islam, liberals, losing our civil rights, losing our jobs, Obamacare, running of money in retirement, snakes, spiders, strangers, success, terrorists, vaccinations, and young men in hoodies.  Some of those fears are rational, some are not, some of those fears are relatively harmless, some are not, but they are all real fears.

We live in a culture that manufactures fears.  Politicians do it on both sides of the aisle, bewailing the awful things that will happen if Senator X has his way.  Advertisers of all sorts create fears and then offer us the products or services—from home security systems to anti-bacterial soap—that will protect us from the exaggerated threat that stokes our fears. 

We aren’t the first culture to be so dominated by fear, although our media are past masters at creating and stoking our fears so that we can be motivated to buy or vote or tune in or click in the way that they want us to.  Rome created and used fears, too.  They used a carrot and stick approach.  Mostly, though, the elites got the carrots and the ordinary folks got the stick.  Jesus’ execution was one of thousands performed during the Roman occupation of Palestine that were intended to strike fear into the hearts of Roman subjects, intended to stifle criticism of the Empire, intended to make any alternative to Roman rule unthinkable.  It was a brutal policy, but it was also effective.

But on Easter Sunday morning, the two Mary’s discovered that the strangle hold of Roman hegemony on the imagination of its Jewish subjects had been broken.  An angel appeared and the tomb carefully sealed by the authorities was thrown open for all to see that it was empty.  The Roman troops who were feared everywhere they went had fainted away from fear.  Jesus, the man who proclaimed God’s empire as an alternative to Rome’s, the man whom the authorities convincingly, thoroughly and completely killed, this man was alive.  They not only heard the angel’s report, they met Jesus himself. 

The message of the angel and the message of the risen Jesus is the same: Don’t be afraid.  Don’t fear the Empire, don’t fear the authorities, don’t fear the grave, don’t be afraid.  That message has rattled down through the centuries and springs forth once again.  

Don’t be afraid.  Each of us will die.  As Americans we don’t like to talk about it or think about it, but that won’t change it.  Each of us will die.  We don’t have to be afraid of death.  We don’t have to pretend it will never happen.  We don’t have to obsess over it.  Until we die we will live unafraid.

Don’t be afraid.  By the year 2043[1] the non-Hispanic White population of the United States will fall below fifty percent.  The United States will no longer have any racial majority.  For some this is a frightful prospect and I’m convinced it lies behind much of the racial nastiness that has emerged in the last few years.  But even though this is a new situation for all of us, we don’t have to be afraid.  We don’t have to project our guilt or our fears on any group of people.  We can learn to live differently as neighbors sharing a great land.  We don’t have to be afraid.

Don’t be afraid.  Some of us are terribly worried about the United Methodist Church.  As an institution it faces threats from disunity and from falling financial support.  Globally, the center of gravity in the church is shifting overseas to Africa and Asia.  But we don’t have to be afraid.  The risen Jesus is not a Methodist, or a Lutheran, or a Catholic.  Whatever changes we face in the United Methodist Church, we can know for a certainty that the Jesus movement will go on.  We don’t have to be afraid.

The Easter proclamation is a summons to fearlessness.  With so many forces counting on our fear, in our day fearlessness has become a subversive act, a counter-cultural movement.  The grave is open and empty.  The authorities have seen their power slip through their hands.  They are ones who should be afraid.  The threat to their power from the Galilean prophet has just begun.

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[1] Cooper, Michael, “U.S. Will Have No Ethnic Majority, Census Finds.” Cited 19 April 2014. Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/us/us-will-have-no-ethnic-majority-census-finds.html.