Second Sunday of Easter: When the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear

Second Sunday of Easter
2020

Parish of Holy Cross—St. John the Baptist
Midtown Manhattan
 

…when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear…

Fear.

A formidable force.  Coloring our thinking, our imagination, our interaction – fear effectively locks us up.  An invisible prison, a costly confinement, fear snatches away our ability to trust.

While each of us as individuals has surely confronted our private fears, shared fear among a common people is a truly fearsome thing, taking on a life of its own.  When collective fear invades our communities, we cease to be a genuine people.  Rather, we morph into mobs capable of monstrous deeds.  

At the risk of being exposed as one in hot pursuit of the obvious, these days of padlocked doors and gates find us locked up in fear.  A shared fear.  As statistics of disease and death mount, a good many of us cringe, transfixed before television and computer screens in search of a glimmer of hope and a means to put the threat to rest. 

The few times we venture into the streets for food, medicine, and hygienic supplies, every step of the way is wrapped in tangible apprehension.  Should we need to avail ourselves of public transportation, the panic is even more palpable.  Every passerby a potential source of infection, each conversation a jumpy affair in the attempt to avoid another’s breath.  Upon our return home, we strip away masks, peel off latex gloves, furiously scrub our hands and merchandise.  Once more we enter into the uneasy quiet that veils our anxiety, boredom, frustration and fear.

The gospel passage proclaimed on this Second Sunday of Easter – the eighth and final day of the Octave of Easter – finds the early disciples locked up in fear.  A very specific, shared fear.  The quote from John’s gospel at the head of this reflection is only a partial one.  The fuller quote reads:  On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.¹  A text of distinct hazard in light of its subsequent interpretation.

 Jesus’ execution, at the hands of the Romans in collusion with the Temple authorities, had first stunned his disciples and then broken them.  Fearing for their lives, they holed up in a hidden room stewing in their mutual suspicions, resentments, recriminations – assigning blame for the betrayals, desertions, denials.  While at odds with one another, in their shared fear they found a common focus – their fellow Jews who had rejected Jesus.  And it is vital that we recognize and ponder that phrase: their fellow Jews.

The quarrel over Jesus’ status – his faithfulness to Torah, his devotion to Temple – was not a dispute between Christian and Jew.  That debate was an internal Jewish debate.  The argument was waged among those who stood in the shared tradition flowing from the covenant made with Moses.  Various Jewish groups – Galileans, Idumeans, Judeans – differing in their assessment, their judgment.  Each and every one of them negotiating their own fears and loyalties, protecting their turf and prestige.  The result was surely tragic and fateful.  Yet, we must observe it was not a Christian versus Jewish affair.  Our gospel passion accounts are desecrated when they are wielded as weapons against anyone, especially Jesus’ fellow Jews. 

Such acknowledgement remains crucial for us if we are to renounce the long history of vitriol and violence visited upon Jewish populations.  A disfigured history of a hollow humanity.  Pogroms targeting Jewish people – already recorded in the 1^st century – blanketed the Middle Ages and continued their wrath into the 19^th century.  The Shoah (Holocaust) during the Second World War marks the agonizing summit of a calamity that yet haunts the conscience of Western nations.  Yet, there remain strains of this odium floating through our culture here in North America, broad insinuations referencing money, finance, and a host of other prejudicial affronts.  

To repeat: Shared fear among a common people is a truly fearsome thing, taking on a life of its own. When collective fear invades our communities, we cease to be a genuine people.  Rather, we morph into mobs capable of monstrous deeds.  

The Risen Jesus, a slaughtered Galilean peasant now exalted in the power of the G-D who had made covenants with Abraham and Moses, returns to free his Jewish disciples from the fear that polarized and paralyzed them.  Freed them from fear.  Freed them for forgiveness. 

Freed from fear, freed for forgiveness is the dynamism through which Jesus’ Spirit fashions a common people entrusted with his mission.  The Risen Jesus restored the shattered faith of his disciples.  He healed the rift opened between the disciples and Thomas who had lost trust in their word.  He commissioned them to be agents of his forgiveness.  He continues to send us:

Fear is useless, what is needed is trust.²

Peace be with you.³

 

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¹ Gospel of John: 20:19

² Gospel of Mark 5:36

³ Gospel of John 20:26