A Sermon for the Feast of the Resurrection All Saints’ Church, Southern
Shores, N.C. April 20, 2014 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you
seek”, wrote Joseph Campbell about our dreams, myths, and stories about fear. In
the Gospel story for today, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary see the open cave
and they are afraid. “Don’t be afraid,” says the angel to Mary Magdalene and
the other Mary. And in the same story Jesus says to the two women “Don’t be
afraid.”
Have you ever been afraid?
When I was a child, my older brother and some of his
friends “liberated” some lumber from a building site and hauled the lumber down
to a cove and across the rapids to an island in the middle of the river by our
house and built a rudimentary fort in a tree. This was their secret hideout,
and one day I went across the rapids when no one else was there and climbed the
cross pieces nailed to the tree, reached out a long way - I was shorter than my
brother and his friends - grabbed the edge, and pulled myself onto the
platform. I idolized my brother and I wanted to be just like him in every way,
but he was fearless and I, to my shame, had more caution, which I saw as craven
cowardliness. But on that day I congratulated myself on having the courage to
go behind my brother’s back and go to the fort I had been warned never to go to
upon the threat of being beaten up. I had climbed that big tall tree, about 30
feet above the ground, all by myself and I was now the master; I was now as
fearless as my brother. Except that, when I wanted to leave, I realized that I
was not all that sure where the cross pieces of wood were, and all I could
think of was that when I lowered myself I would not be able to get purchase on
the cross piece and would have to hang there until I dropped - dropped all the
way down. There was another way down - the slide for life. They had attached a
pulley to a limb and then ran a rope to a couple feet off the ground on another
tree; you held onto a rope and slid down the steep incline until your feet
touched the ground. I stood there and held onto the handle of the rope, and all
I had to do was jump. I looked at the steep incline and I saw the hard ground.
For the life of me I could not get my feet to leave the safety of the plywood
floor. It was a new experience, and I was afraid the rope would break. I stayed
up there an hour and then my brother and his friends came and they told me to
get down. I told them I was scared and needed help getting down, but I was not
going to take the slide for life. My brother did not beat me up, and after a
while he climbed up part of the way and guided my feet onto the cross pieces - and
he guided my feet to every step until I reached safety.
Back to Joseph Campbell, “The cave you fear to
enter holds the treasure you seek.” I think, yes, my fear was partly of being
hurt, but I feared more deeply the thought of catching up with my brother, for
then I would have no excuse not to go into new ground that he had not already
trod. I did not really want the responsibility of entering into the unknown. I
realized that later when my brother died, and a year later when the depression
really hit, I realized that I was now older than my older brother and father
would ever be. Freud said that people do
not really want freedom because, if they claimed that freedom, then they would
have to take responsibility for their own lives.
A year later when I was taller and in the 5th
grade, I returned to the tree fort which had seen a rough winter, and the tree
didn’t seem as tall. I took the slide
for life and I wondered why I had ever been afraid. Once I claimed it and went
beyond it, I was able to fully live for a few moments without fear. I had to enter that fear or I would be
lost. My story of fear is like the rest
of your stories of fear and the universal stories and myths that populate our dreams
and our unconscious and conscious lives.
It would be nice to say that fear left my life, but
as I grew older, I found more things of which to be afraid and, in my fear, I
would have moments of paralysis and incompetence. The fears were many: not making the team, getting turned down by a
girl for a dance, not passing the course, taking an unpopular stand which might
place me and those I love in danger, having a child, not getting a job, losing
someone’s love, not having enough money, changing a career, accepting a call,
making a change to an unknown future, and the final fear - dying. Nelson
Mandela wrote: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the
triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who
conquers that fear.”
Easter is about facing and conquering fear. The
angel tells the women, and us, to not be afraid because there is a power
greater than ourselves who can give us the strength to conquer the fear we have;
we do not need to face the fear alone. Don’t be afraid of entering the cave,
the angel says, almost echoing Campbell: “The cave you fear to enter holds the
treasure you seek.” The women face the cave and are afraid they will find that
Jesus is not there, and then they will have to enter a new kind of living. The
strength to enter the cave is a gift given them by the angel’s presence. Caves
come in so many disguises - and so do angels giving us the strength to enter
them. Jesus, the one who went through death itself, tells the two Mary’s, and
us, that no matter what we go through, it will all be redeemed. Death does not
have to be only a cave but a gate. When we die to ourselves, we start to face
our fears and we do not need to be ruled by them.
The message of scripture is uniform. When the angel came to Mary to announce the
coming of Jesus, the angel said “Don’t be afraid, I have something wonderful to
tell you.” From before the beginning of his life to after the end of his life,
the message is the same - “Don’t be afraid”. Frederick Buechner
in his book Wishful Thinking defined
Grace as the power given to us to overcome our tendency to fear:
Grace is something you
can never get but only be given. The grace of God means something like: Here is
your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't
have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible
things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate
us. It's for you. I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch.
Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you reach out and
take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”
Easter is a gift of the strength not to be ruled by
our fears. “Don’t be afraid.”
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