Why Are You Frightened?

Scripture Lessons: 1 John 3: 1-7 and Luke 24: 36b-48 Sermon Title: Why Are You Frightened? Preached on 4/18/2021 I’ve always been scared of ghosts. Seriously. Since I was little I’ve been scared of ghosts, more than snakes or heights or anything else. I remember being young, like six or seven, in my grandmother’s basement with my older cousins who thought it would be fun to play with an old Ouija board we found. You know those things, with the “mystical planchette” that you use to communicate with the dead? It probably was fun playing with that thing for the first few minutes as my cousins summoned the spirits of our dead relatives, until I screamed so loud that my grandmother heard me, ran downstairs, and they all got in big trouble. I’m not sure exactly what it is with ghosts, but there is something about them that unsettles me, which is true for a lot of people. Many people are scared of ghosts. If they weren’t no one would scream in scary movies, and they do scream in scary movies. I’ve been one of them. What we know from every horror film that has ever been made is that ghosts rarely come visit people to tell funny jokes or make them feel better. Ghosts appear to scare people in the movies, sometimes to warn them like they did Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, or to let the living know that their souls will never be at rest unless they are avenged like they do in so many Shakespeare plays, so if a ghost shows up, movies, literature, movies, and experience has taught us to be afraid. The disciples were too. What’s clear from our Second Scripture Lesson is that they thought he was a ghost. That sounds strange to our ears. Just the idea that they would have been scared of our gentle savior sounds very strange, but they were. They were “terrified” Luke’s Gospel tells us. Why? Why did they scream like little kids or a grown pastor in a horror movie? Why weren’t they excited? Why weren’t they relieved? Think about it with me this way: had Shakespeare been the one to write the Gospel of Luke, I imagine he might have made Jesus something like the ghost king of Denmark in Hamlet. Maybe Jesus would have showed up as a ghost to tell the disciples who is to blame for his death just as the ghost king tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet’s uncle. Only worse, if this were the case, then the ghost after revenge showed up to haunt the very ones who were partly guilty for his death. Certainly, if Jesus were a ghost than he showed up to haunt the ones who felt guilty for his death. Surely, they had spent their time hiding in that locked room feeling shame. Thinking about how only the women were with him in the end. How they were the ones he called brothers, yet they abandoned, betrayed, or denied him, and maybe they were thinking that now his soul will never rest until justice is paid in full. That’s what ghosts show up to do in the popular imagination, dredge up the past, and so the Gospel of Luke tells us that “Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” [Despite this peaceful greeting] they were startled and terrified,” because they thought they were seeing a ghost. Jesus then said to them, “Why are you frightened,” and I can pretty easily answer that question and I bet you can too. Had it been me standing there, I would have assumed that Jesus’ ghost had returned to let me know how disappointed he was in me for failing him in that crucial moment. He would have spoken of that moment that led to an innocent man’s death, and how I wasn’t brave enough to do anything about it or to at least die up there with him. Isn’t that what we all assume ghosts are all about? Can you think of a single ghost who comes back from the dead to let his friends and family know how proud he is of all of them? Think about the ghosts you’ve heard about. The Headless Horseman wants a new head. The creepy twins in the Shining want someone to come and play, which is a mundane invitation that only a ghost can make sound terrifying. Little Cole Sear “sees dead people” in the Sixth Sense, and why? Why do the dead appear to him? From McBeth, Shakespeare gives us his answer: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm The instruments of darkness tell us truth Win us with honest trifles and betrayals Of deepest consequence. What do the disciples assume Jesus wants? Judas was dead already, but Peter still lived. Had Jesus returned to hold him to account for what he’d done or failed to do? When we think of ghosts, that’s something of what we think of. Even Casper wants help making peace with his past, so if the disciples are afraid, we might assume they thought he was a ghost who had come back to haunt them. Like how my grandmother once threatened my mom: “Cathy, when I die and you clean out my house, if you pull all my things out front for a yard sale, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.” That’s how we think. We imagine that souls will return to earth to let us know how we’ve failed them. We have nightmares of our beloved whispering one last word, one last message. We long for their words to be loving or affirming but we fear they’re disappointed in us. We return to the tomb of fathers and grandfathers worried that we haven’t lived up to the calling. Some even imagine that one day they will have to stand before Almighty God and when their deeds are weighed, he will either be pleased or disappointed. My friends, if you imagine that Christ would show up like a ghost who is disappointed in you than you have forgotten who he is. Just as Christ asked the disciples, we must ask ourselves, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” for Christ is not a ghost and vengeance is not what he’s looking for. Christ comes to them alive and he comes now just as he lived: full of love and forgiveness, consistent with who he always said he would be. Not like the Headless Horseman searching to do more harm in death as he’d done in life, but like the Father who welcomes the Prodigal Son home. Not like any of the figures of horror movies who terrorize the living, but like Esau who offers his brother Jacob the kind of forgiveness that he did not deserve. Not like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come who showed Scrooge his grave by pointing towards it with a shrouded bone of a finger, but like the Lamb of God Most Holy who invites us through the gates of heaven by opening his arms wide to embrace us fully. We all forget, even disciples forget, what God is like sometimes. And we think that he blames us for getting lost, when all he really wants is to find us again. I recently read a sermon by the great Howard Thurman. Thurman is now considered the brilliant theological mind of the Civil Rights movement. He was from Florida and wrote and preached all over, teaching religion at Morehouse and Howard, traveling to India to meet with Gandhi, and when thinking about the parable of the lost coin and the lost sheep he imagines what it might be like to find yourself as a lost sheep: A sheep was enjoying his grass and the other things that sheep enjoy as he went along, and then when he started feeling chilly, he didn’t recall, but the only thing that he remembers is that suddenly he became aware that he was cold, and there was a throwback in his mind, and he realized that he had been cold for some time. But the grass was good. Then he looked around and he discovered that he was alone. That everybody had gone. That is, that all the sheep had gone. And he began crying aloud. And then the shepherd, who had many sheep, missed him when he got back to the fold, and he left his ninety and nine – or whatever the number was – and he went out to try to find this sheep that was lost. And Jesus said, “God is like that.” Well of course he is, but when we find ourselves all alone, for some reason it becomes easier to believe in ghosts than in the loving, merciful shepherd. So, hear this: imagining that Peter and the others are afraid, he does what Jesus always does. Jesus, seeking out what is precious and lost, finds them and rejoices. He greets them not with anger, but with joy. Not with blame, but thanksgiving. He’s not mad at Peter, he just wants his friend to come back to the fold. That is what we must remember today. As Rev. Cassie Waits so beautifully put it in her sermon last Sunday, for a year now we’ve been like these disciples, locked behind closed doors, and now we must get back out again. The problem is that, to leave, we first must conquer our fear of ghosts. Because lockdown started, and then it lasted. No one has had dinner together. No one has seen you. So, how do you start again after not speaking for a year? There are likely all kinds of thoughts in your mind. The kind of thoughts that wake us up at night: what if they don’t like me anymore. What if there disappointed. What if they’re mad at me. These are the kinds of thoughts that lurk in our imagination and keep us confined to self-imposed prisons, so the Savior walks right in and shows us how it’s done. It all starts just by him asking, “Have you anything here to eat?” There is the traditional way to explain this request: ghosts don’t eat. By asking for food Jesus shows the disciples that he’s a living man resurrected from the dead, but there’s something else to this request, for in making it Jesus shows us that reconciliation is only as complicated as we let it be. A chasm can be bridged over a simple meal. The difference between a ghost and a real person is that ghosts aren’t real, so don’t let your fear of them keep you from living abundantly. All you have to do is show up on a doorstep trusting that death never has the final word when the Risen Lord is on our side. Our First Scripture Lesson put it this way: “See what love the father has given us… Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed,” so don’t assume that you know how the story ends. You still have the chance to come back home to community and fellowship, for Christ welcomes us all and we must be bold to welcome home each other. This is the reality of the Father’s Love. How he could have remained in the tomb and allowed our rejection of him to have the final word, but instead he sought us out again, not as a ghost. As a loving father who wants nothing more than to love his children and to bring them back home. Thanks be to God for his wonderous love. Now, let us share it with the world, for we are witnesses to these things. Amen.