Matthew 28, 1-10

Sermon: Fear and Great Joy

“Mixed emotions,” we call it—that confused response
when something so stupendous happens to us that we feel both negative
and positive reactions at the same time. That’s what captured my
attention in our Matthew text for today. The mixed emotions of the two
women who came to visit the tomb of Jesus early on the first day of the
week—that Sunday we call Easter.

However, there seemed to me to be something more here than just understandable
mixed emotions, and it finally dawned on me that these specific emotions
had been mentioned earlier in the life of Jesus, and it was with an angel
then, too. Remember? Luke tells that other story, “There were shepherds…keeping
watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the lord stood before
them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I
am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people….’” Fear
and great joy—those emotions were present at the announcement of
the birth of Jesus by the angel, and fear and great joy were the emotions
of the women who heard the announcement of the resurrection of Jesus
by the angel at the tomb.

Angels reported on in the Bible seem always to be saying, “Do
not be afraid.” That’s understandable. For any of us the
unmistakable sight of a heavenly being would be at least discomforting,
if not totally terrifying. If that appearance were accompanied by an
earthquake and an opening grave, you and I might not even survive the
experience. “Do not be afraid.” Those would be welcome words
indeed, but fear we would in spite of the comforting words. We don’t
walk through our days expecting a visit from heavenly beings. In fact,
the world around us and the world inside us leads us not to believe that
such a visit would even be possible. At times we are likely to contrast
our “modern, scientific” understanding of reality with that
of the people portrayed in the Bible; but they were terrified by this
appearance—both the shepherds at the time of Jesus’ birth
and the women at the tomb—they were terrified by the angel. That
means that they were no more expecting such an experience in their time
than we are today.

So the angel startled and frightened the women, but what about the joy?
The important aspect of the text is not the appearance of an angel but
the message of that angel: “I know that you are looking for Jesus
who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.” Now
as they leave the tomb they do so “with fear and great joy.” That
was mixed emotions of the best kind. Joy overwhelms fear, but does not
obliterate it. Around the edges there lie those fears that perhaps we
are imagining the whole thing. Maybe it isn’t true. We want to
believe, but there are always those nagging doubts. And who else will
believe it? The women were instructed to tell the other disciples of
Jesus. Would they believe it? So they ran on with mixed emotions.

And then the ultimate experience happened. The resurrected Jesus himself
was suddenly there. And what does he say to them? “Do not be afraid….” They
had seen him crucified. They had watched him die. They had observed his
burial in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. And here he was talking to
them, telling them not to fear. They still had plenty to fear, but that’s
another story. For now joy could banish fear. He is alive—their
Teacher, their Savior, their Lord! He has an assignment for them. These
fearful women—people whose testimony was discounted by the law—these
women were to announce what the angel had told them and what they had
experienced for themselves, that Jesus has been raised from the dead
and will meet the assembled disciples in Galilee.

Is this the weak link in the story of the resurrection? Did God run
an awful risk here? Entrusting fearful women with such a momentous message
was taking a chance, wasn’t it? If they had convinced themselves
that it was a hallucination—that they were just imagining the whole
thing—you and I might never have heard about Jesus of Nazareth.
The Lord might have found another way if the women had let fear win out
over joy, but we don’t know that there was a “Plan B.”

Christians throughout the ages of the church have stood in the footprints
of those two women. They have wrestled with the mixed emotions of fear
and great joy, and time and again, the joy has defeated the fear and
they have stood up and proclaimed that Jesus has been raised from the
dead. Many times they have had good reason to let fear win out. Many
have made that proclamation in the presence of their executioners. They
could have lived on by letting fear win, but they considered it joy to
suffer for the Lord who had suffered for them.

And here we are. Most of us need not fear physical harm for our faith,
but we live in a world that discourages us from running and telling a
story of a resurrected Savior. And so we fear. We fear rejection by our
friends. We fear being branded “fanatics.” We fear that we
are going overboard with this religion thing. Fear paralyzes; and so
we stand in the footprints of those two women who had to be told by the
angel exactly what to do. Then Jesus himself gave them the same instructions, “Go
and tell.”

Do we hear those instructions for us? It wasn’t the first time
Jesus gave such a commission, and it wasn’t the last time either.
Go and preach. Go and teach. Go and heal. Go and make disciples. Such
instructions are found in all the gospels. They appear again and again.
They are certainly meant not just as references to history, but as expectations
of Christians in every age, in every nation, in all circumstances.

The reality of the resurrected Lord we experience each time we gather
with God’s people and celebrate the mystery of the Lord’s
Supper. The commission of Christ we hear each time we are dismissed with
words like, “Go in peace; serve the Lord.” Only one question
remains: Does fear conquer joy or is our joy the “great joy” that
obliterated fear and impels us into our world with the most awesome message
ever heard: Jesus is not dead; he has been raised from the dead?

May our story reflect the story of the shepherds, who went and “made
known what was told them,” and the story of the women, who “left
the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”

Go in peace and serve the Lord by telling the story.

Prof. Bruce E. Shields
Emmanuel School of Religion
Johnson City, Tennessee, USA
E-Mail: ShieldsB@esr.edu