06 / Thoughts On Holy Saturday
Do not be afraid
Yesterday’s heavy blow is laying down and most the fleet of lobster boats are resting on their moorings, floating still on the harbor. The bright sky agrees it’s April, but the cold wind has not given its full consent to the promise of spring. But it’s warm on this side of the glass as I gaze out and ponder, fishing for new words good enough for the old story we will remember in church on Easter morning, tomorrow.
Like a net hitching up on an underwater rock, the words “Do not be afraid” snag me. After the sabbath as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb into which their dead friend and teacher was sealed on the worst day of their lives, the reality of which was beyond the darkest cruelty they thought possible. Suddenly, something like a flash of lightning rolled back the stone in a blast so shocking that the armed guards panicked and became like dead men. That was when an angel told Mary and Mary not to be afraid. “I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here…. Come see the place where he lay.”
When anyone tells me not to be afraid, I bristle at the unwanted advice. “Too late,” I want to say. “I’m already there, very afraid.” No one has ever told me not to be afraid unless they knew for sure that I already was. And every time I’ve had my reasons. The fears come honestly, a result of being alive and paying attention, getting hurt, facing real threats, and remembering past wounds.
Sometimes the worrisome diagnosis is real. Sometimes you really do lose your job. Sometimes you don’t know how you are going to pay the bills, much less save enough to retire as your parents and grandparent did. Please don’t tell us not to be afraid. Most the world already is and living in the world provides the reasons.
But here’s one thing that seems true to me, real enough to trust my life to as I look out the window at the boats: When the angel said, “Do not be afraid” he was not talking about their feelings. A world of difference separates feeling afraid from being afraid. The angel gave an order about how to be, and what to do, not how to feel. As they stood before the empty tomb in the blinding light, divine truth spoke with a loving order: Do not allow fear to be your God. Be of good courage. Your Lord, your teacher, the one who showed you the way, the truth and the life is not to be found underground, dead from the wounds of yesterday. “Go and tell the disciples he has been raised and is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” They still felt their fear as they ran to share the message. But joy went with them.
On this Holy Saturday on the eve of Easter, there is much more to the great old story, and it is as clear to me as the sun on the water that the truth in this story is greater than any of us can comprehend. For now it’s sufficient to hold - even in worried hearts - that the tombs of our despair and the fears that can keep us in dark places are not the end of the story. This is not what we were made for. And the angels know it.
