by Cathy Hird

Most of us do not face life threatening situations on a daily basis, but we all feel fear. What are you afraid of?

For some of us, there are social situations that make our chest constrict. Standing in front of a crowd to speak makes our legs shake. We have to go to a party alone, will have to mingle with a crowd of strangers, and we break into a cold sweat. We avoid the friend who lost a loved one because we are afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Sometimes we are afraid of failure. We may over prepare, put in hours of extra work to get it right. Or we are so afraid of failing that we do not try. At times, we are afraid the world is failing, that peace is impossible and climate change is bringing inevitable disaster. We are afraid our life is headed for a crash. We are afraid our child is climbing into real trouble.

Whatever we are afraid of, fear shuts us down. We close our eyes so we don't have to see trouble coming. We close our hands so we do not have to touch the task we cannot handle. We put our hands over our ears and close our minds. Fear shuts us away from other people and from ourselves.

As I ponder the need to deal with fear, I would like to offer a story from the Christian tradition. Whatever you believe about Jesus' resurrection, his closest followers experienced something that moved them from terrified to confident.

The fear that Jesus' friends felt was grounded in their experience of his state-sanctioned torture and execution. They could not be sure that the authorities were satisfied with one death. The people with power might have felt that killing the leader would destroy the movement, but they might want to make examples of his closest disciples.

These followers shut themselves away in the room where they spent their last night with Jesus. Even when they found that his tomb was empty, they retreated to the upper room. Even though an angel told them he was alive, that news was not enough to give them hope. It was too strange, too new.

They were told to go back to Galilee and continue his work, but they do not know how to do that. They cannot imagine doing his miracles without him. They do not remember everything he taught. They have been followers not leaders. They stay in the upper room, closed away from the city and the work they have been given. They are afraid.

But something happened in that room. The presence of Jesus came among them, spoke to them. His first word was "Peace." He breathed peace upon them, breathed peace into them. Not the world's peace, but a peace from beyond. He promised a Spirit would be with them, a presence that would connect them to the past, to him and to God.

There are people who always bring us peace. As soon as we hear their voice, we relax. Jesus' resurrected presence was like that: it was the presence of peace, a presence that banished fear.

They were told that the Spirit would help them remember and would give them power. They sensed that death did not win. The powers of the empire did not conquer. They saw a new life, a spiritual life. Later, the apostle Paul compared the resurrection to planting a seed: the grain of wheat and the stalk of the plant are connected but not the same; the life that dies and the life beyond life are connected, but a different form, he argued.

What the disciples experienced in that room answered all their fear. Death was not the end of Jesus' work; something still lived to guide them as they ventured back into the world. Power did not kill his good work, and pain did not defeat his intention, God's intention. The empty tomb and his presence in that room were signs that life continued. The angel's words hinted of light. His living presence brought them the hope that there was something beyond the apparent end. His peace and his presence opened them to each other, to their world, and to their own spirits.