Fear
can be a terrible thing. It can
interrupt our day, make anything that we are doing more difficult. It needs to be confronted and put to rest,
but often that is a very hard thing to do.
Jesus disciples were haunted by fear
after their Lord was arrested, condemned and crucified by the religious authorities
and by Pontius Pilate. The gospel for today is an earlier conversation, but it describes
all of this. It is a clear statement by
Jesus that we will follow him into eternity.
His disciples didn’t understand that.
Notice that he begins his conversation with them by saying do
not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me; words
said to his disciples because of their obvious fear. I can understand how they felt. Their Lord was talking about leaving them and
they were afraid of what would come next.
How would they be treated by the Sadducees and the Pharisees? Would they be caught? Would they then face death?
After the resurrection when they
were all behind closed doors as the gospel said, for fear of the Jews. It is then that the resurrected Jesus appears
to them and showed them his wounds, but he was obviously present. At that moment, their fear turned to joy and
they knew that their work was not in vain and that they would continue the work
that they had all started together.
I love this morning’s gospel. I want it to be read at my funeral. It speaks eloquently of the truth of eternal
life and the incredible mercy that Jesus offers to all of us after our death. It has the obvious intent of confronting and
allaying our fears. It isn’t necessary
to be afraid of dying. It is a perfectly
natural thing that we will all experience.
The difficulty that it presents is that of leaving our family and our
friends and not being with them anymore.
That is why we grieve. Grief is an
important emotion. It speaks clearly of
the love that we have for each other and the loss that we feel at the time of
death. Our grief is why we come together
at funerals to care for each other. Our
compassion and caring goes a long way to overcoming the worst of our
grieving. I have seen that happen
countless times in my ministry. When
families gather to mourn a death with their friends and relatives, it makes a
profound difference. Surprisingly, the
most frequent sound that you will hear in a funeral home is laughter. It comes from people telling stories about
the deceased and sharing their own personal moments. That is a beautiful thing.
What Jesus is telling his disciples
is that his ministry won’t be over, even if he dies. He tells them that they will go into the
world and do greater things than he has done.
That he will be with them always and that they will never be alone. The key to this is what Jesus calls
belief. Believe in God, he tells
them,
believe also in me! He goes on to tell them that even if they don’t
believe in him, look at the works that he has done and to believe in them. He tells them that they will go on to do
greater works than these. And so they
did. There are many stories of the
disciples healing and bringing life to people who had no hope.
After Jesus’ resurrection, Peter
begins to confront the Pharisees about the way that they are treating
people. He is no longer afraid of
them. This became true of all of Jesus’
followers. Eventually, they all died,
but before that, they formed and developed a wonderful Christian community that
spread the word of God throughout the countryside.
In the Epistle today, we have the
story of the stoning of the first martyr Stephen with Saul, later named Paul,
holding the coats of the stoners. With
his last breath, the dying Stephen prays to God not to hold this sin against
any of those who are killing him. We all
know what happened shortly after to Saul, how he was stopped on the road to
Damascus, blinded and called out by the risen Christ when he says to Saul: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? The blind Saul, then renamed Paul was sent
into Damascus to see a man named Annanias who cured him of his blindness and set him on the
course that we know so well through his letters. Paul the apostle who had never met Jesus in
the flesh became a powerful promoter of the Christian cause.
That is how the church continued
down the centuries. We are the latest
edition of the followers of Christ. We
are sent into the world to make life better for those whom we meet. God loves all of us and all of them. What we do for them is the nature of
Christian ministry. Making fear go away
is a great part of our work. Believe in
God, believe also in Jesus. That is the
key both to this life and the next.
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