The Lectionary always has us read the
story of “Doubting” Thomas on this Second Sunday of the Easter season. He is the disciple who is not present when
Jesus first appears to his followers on evening after the Resurrection. They are hiding in a house - the doors locked
and the windows shuttered – because they are fearful authorities are going to
arrest them just as they had arrested Jesus a few days earlier.
Thomas gets a bad rap as being the
doubter in the group, when in fact, not a single disciple believes Jesus has
risen from the dead. To be completely
accurate, most do not even believe the women’s report that the tomb is empty. Now that is doubting at the highest level! Here is what sets Thomas apart from the
others: he is the only disciple who is brave enough to leave the house where
all the others are hiding. The text does
not tell us where he went or what he was doing, but this much is clear: he is
not as fearful as the others.
So let’s switch our focus from the
inaccurately dubbed “Doubting” Thomas to the more accurately tagged “Fear-Filled”
Followers. That is what this Sunday should
be all about.
Consider this: Jesus spent three years of
his life teaching this group about the Kingdom of God – a spiritual reality
inviting them to turn their focus upward to God and outward to others. But now, just a few days after the Crucifixion,
the focus of Jesus’ followers has shifted from proclamation to
self-preservation. Aung San Suu Kyi, the former Burmese political
prisoner and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize makes the observation, “The
only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.” For the disciples, the outer reality of the
locked room is a reflection of inner fear imprisoning them. They have compromised their identity, lost
their purpose, and forsaken their mission.
The Kingdom of God, built on self-sacrifice, has given way to the
perceived need to protect oneself at all costs.
If we are going to be honest with ourselves, we cannot be too critical
of the disciples because we are very much like them. We too spend much of our lives locked-up in a
state of fear. We are anxious about so
much of the way the world is today and we attempt to protect ourselves by
locking it out.
Phil Barker, a member of the research
staff at the Conflict Research Consortium, defines fear as “an unpleasant and often strong emotion caused by
anticipation or awareness of danger.” He
notes fear is “completely natural and helps people to recognize and respond to
dangerous situations and threats.” But,
he says, ‘healthy’ fear can also evolve into something unhealthy, even
pathological. It can
manifests itself in the guise of anger, jealously, and resentment. This kind of
fear can lead to exaggerated or even violent behavior.
Barker points to the work of Dr. Ivan Kos who described three stages of
fear:
First
there is real fear. If someone punches you every time you meet,
you have reason to fear the person will punch again the next time your paths
cross.
Next
there is realistic or possible fear. This kind leads you to manage a threat or
avoid it altogether. Realistic fear is
why we take care crossing a busy street.
Finally,
there is exaggerated or emotional fear. This bubbles up when a person recalls a past
experience of fear and injects that memory into a current situation, even
though the two events are not related.
We say this kind of fear “clouds” our thinking.
Fear can be and often is manifested collectively. Perhaps the single most significant collective
fear in our time is the fear of losing our identity. The world is changing rapidly and our lives
are being changed as a result. We fear
the world will pass us by. We are afraid
our children will abandon our time-honored traditions and that outside
influences will supplant our role in their lives.
This same fear is the common
denominator behind all religious fundamentalism, be it Christian, Islam, or
Judaism. Fundamentalists are afraid of
change, modernization, and loss of influence.
They worry their children will abandon faith in favor of physical and
material gratification. They worry the mass
media will subvert the young people with images of song, dance, fashion,
alcohol, drugs, sex, and freedom. They are
especially fearful of education if it undermines the teachings of their
religion. They fear a future they can’t
control, or even comprehend.
Is it any surprise the political analyst James F. Mattil states this:
The common thread that weaves violent political movements together is
fear. It is not the only motivating
factor behind political violence, nor necessarily the most obvious, but it is
virtually always there. Whenever we ask
why people hate, or why they are willing to kill or die for a cause, the answer
is invariably fear.
Our current political climate is
dominated by fear. It leads us to
portray one group or perspective as completely heroic while branding another
other as barbaric, inhumane, and/or un-American. Leaders understand this and play on our fears
because they need our support. The net
effect does not calm our fears, but rather escalates them; giving rise to even
more irrational and destructive behavior.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says, “Fear has never been a good
advisor.” The more afraid we are of the
other the easier it is to dehumanize them and dismiss them, or, even worse, to
perpetrate abuse against them.
The disciples gathered behind locked doors were not strangers to any of
this. Most were from Galilee, an area
considered to yield little more than rubes and bumpkins. Like all Jews, they suffered under Roman
occupation and before that, Greek and Persian control. As with all fear, memories run deep and all
these past experiences played into and fed on the fear they were feeling in
that locked room.
The Risen Jesus walks into the darkness of their self-imposed prison of
self-preservation. His words speak to
the heart of the situation: “Peace be
with you.” He then shows them his hands
and side. They instantly know who he is
and rejoice. Again he says, “Peace be
with you”, only this time he refocuses them on their true sense of identity,
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
They are not meant for fearful hiding, but for reaching out in God’s
name in order to build bridges across the chasms created by fear and hatred. Finally, Jesus imparts on his followers the
presence of the Holy Spirit; not the wild and wholly fireball of Pentecost, but
a calm, soothing exhaling of breath.
The Hebrew word for peace is ‘shalom’. Beyond peace, it conveys a sense of
wholeness, fullness, and harmony. Shalom
among people is something akin to a woven fabric where relatedness and
interdependence create something useful, often beautiful. Shalom enables us individually and
collectively to live into our true identity as people of God.
Notice Jesus does not return from the dead with an army of avenging
angels to wipe out every power and every perspective giving rise to the
disciples’ fears. Everything about the
outside world remains exactly as it was.
What Jesus changes is the disciples.
He transforms their fear into shalom.
They will still be appropriately cautious, most of the time at least;
which is to say they will still exhibit realistic fear. But from this point forward, there is not one
single instance in the biblical record where they are caught up in emotional,
exaggerated fear. They will move out
into the world as witnesses of the Resurrection and their own personal shalom
will be one of the most compelling aspects of their testimony.
The
psychiatrist Gerald Jampolsky, in his book Love
is Letting Go of Fear, contends there are only two emotions: love and
fear. Love is real, he says. It is the essence of who we are. Fear, on the other hand, is manufactured in
the mind. We take in events from the
outside world and interpret their meaning through a complex web of past
thoughts and experiences. We believe the
outside world is the cause of our fears, when in fact it is just the opposite. Our mind filters what we see and projects its
own interpretation onto it.
If we are
going to overcome our own fears – in addition to the shalom Jesus offers – we
must come to understand what is going on inside of us that gives rise to
fear. The spiritual counselor Pamela
Dussult points to habits that rob us of inner peace. They include living with drama, dependency on
unhealthy things to make us happy, a sense of entitlement, constantly comparing
oneself to others, and engaging the world with a sense of pessimism and
cynicism. If you do not understand why
these things arise inside you, you will never be able to experience
shalom. You will never be able fully and
freely to live into the love Jesus offers to you and invites you to share with
others.
Remember
this: the choice is always yours. You
can live and move and have your being in fear or in love. And, if you choose love, remember you live
and move and have your being in a world where most people have chosen fear. How will you meet these people? What shalom will you have to offer? Think about the disciples locked in that
room. Nothing about their world changed
until they changed. Once they changed -
once their fear gave way to shalom - they became God’s agents of love and change
in the world. Would you like to bring
this love and shalom to your family? To
your friendships? To your
workplace? To the world? If so, may the peace that passes all
understand be with you.
