So, did you notice how much of Holy Week dealt with security and trying to stay safe?
"Go," Pilate says to the chief priests. "You have a guard of soldiers. Make the tomb as secure as you can." Security is almost everyone's concern in the last chapters of the story of Jesus.
Those who arrest Jesus do so with the security of swords and clubs. When Jesus is arrested, the disciples flee the garden and desert Jesus, finding their security in the cover of darkness. Peter swears by an oath that he does not even know Jesus – three denials, all meant to get him out of harm's way.
Pilate's wife tries to keep her husband safe from the prisoner who stands before him by sending Pilate word to have nothing to do with that righteous man. Then, even after Jesus is safely dead, the chief priests know that "you can't be too careful."
They need a guard at the tomb, for security. Pilate sends them on their way with some Roman soldiers to guard a tomb with a dead guy in it.
Not much has changed. If the people WHO try to sell us things are any indication, security is able to consume our imagination and our lives just as it captured Peter's and Pilate's and the chief priests'.
Everyone is interested in keeping us safe. Rules and regulations, taking our shoes off in the airport security line, getting the right medical tests after the age of 50: almost everything can be sold as a way to keep us free from threat.
I get spam calls all the time from someone wanting to sell me a home security system, to help keep me out of income tax jail, or to make sure I have the right insurance. It's nice that people care so much, but dang.
I just got a letter the other day from AARP, wanting to sell me one of those “I've fallen and I can't get up bracelets.”
And I've set off my car alarm by fumbling for my keys more times than I can count, scaring countless others in the Hannaford parking lot. Staying safe seems to be a full time job nowadays.
Now, I actually think it was always like this. “It'll be okay,” say the Judean authorities. “You'll see. We'll make the tomb as secure as we can.” But that didn't work.
And it doesn't work for us who, like Peter, only try to follow Jesus from a safe distance. It doesn't work for us, like Pilate, to wash our hands of the whole mess. It doesn't work for us, like the chief priests, to lock Jesus away in a sealed tomb where we don't have to be embarrassed about him running around in our lives.
All of this trying to make our lives safe from a real commitment runs right up against an earthquake. When tectonic plates are shifting, tyrannical empires can't do much to stop them. When an angel is suddenly popping up, spraying it with tear gas isn't much help. The emperor's goons aren't much help either; at the first sign of trouble they faint away..
Now we have to admit that the women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary do manage to maintain consciousness, unlike the men, but only because the angel says, "Don't you be afraid.”
At first it seems that the women take to heart everything that the angel says, EXCEPT for that part about not being afraid. Matthew says they leave the tomb with great joy, but also with great fear. They are joyful, but they don't feel exactly safe. They are living in a world where the ground is not staying put under their feet and where at least one of the dead in this world has not stayed dead. These are hardly safe, secure times.
Still they run to tell the disciples. On the way, they run into Jesus. Jesus, like the angel before him, says to the women, "Do not be afraid." And you know something? This time those words have an effect. Thank goodness. Otherwise our story might have turned out differently!
Years ago, a chalice bearer at a Rite I service was offering me the wine, and she said the Rite I words like I've never heard them before, "The blood of Christ, shed FOR you." It was a jarring the way she said it. The line is usually spoken, "The blood of Christ shed for you.”
But that day, I thought – for the first time in my life I thought – you know, it could have gone the other way. The blood of Christ could have been shed AGAINST me.
What about those who deserted Jesus, and the one who denied him, and those so-called disciples who stood on the fringes watching the grisly scene of crucifixion unfold, but who did nothing to help? What about them? Why would Jesus love them?
In the end, will they find that his blood, that his death, is a judgment against them? Will it be a judgement against us?
And this is exactly why those four simple words of Jesus are so beautiful. No grand theology. No explanation as to how this whole resurrection thing was pulled off. Just "Do not be afraid.” And that is our reward and that is our salvation, because that is the last time anyone speaks of fear in this story.
When Jesus speaks those words to those early Christians, they were set free from fear, from the real fear of what could have happened if that blood had not been shed FOR us. It will take them time to wrap their heads around this, and it takes us time, too, but it is true. Fear has been sent packin'. Today we are free.
I'm not saying that no one ever means us harm. Certainly, the first disciples were often in harm's way after their experience of Christ's resurrection. I'm only saying that even when they were threatened, the threat no longer owned them. It did not define them. Nor us.
Because, friends, on this day someone else's power over us does NOT rule us.
Someone else's hatred can no longer counter Christ's love. Someone else's cruelty can no longer stand against God's justice.
This is what the women at the tomb now knew; this was the joyful news they had to share. Jesus had come back to them, and he had promised his Spirit to be with them until the end of the age.
So today, alleluia, do not be afraid. In Christ, there is a victory over fear. Do not be afraid because God is creating a new heaven and a new earth. Do not be afraid because our lives and our destinies are held in the loving arms of one who died and rose again. Do not be afraid.
Amen.