Saturday, April 19, 2014

Sermon For Easter- "Don't Be Afraid"



A Sermon for the Feast of the Resurrection               All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. April 20, 2014                                                                Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Jeremiah 31:1-6                                Colossians 3:1-4            Matthew 28:1-10

“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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