Social Affairs

Thinking Anew – Afraid yet filled with joy

We are invited into something new at Easter. Will we say yes to Jesus?

The giving and the receiving of forgiveness brings joy. Photograph: Getty Images

Wendy May Jacobs
Sat Apr 8 2023 - 09:00

The liturgical year reaches its peak. On Easter Sunday, the heavy cloud of grief and desolation lifts, and we step into a new landscape. The Kingdom of God has come.

In 1966, Fr Elias Chacour was a new Melkite priest in the Arab Israeli village of I’billin. He had inherited a congregation riven by long-standing suspicion and resentments and unforgiveness. One morning, after the Palm Sunday Eucharist, Fr Elias could take it no longer. He locked his congregation into the church and said: “This morning while I celebrated this liturgy, I found someone who is able to help you. In fact, he is the only one who can work the miracle of reconciliation in this village. This person who can reconcile you is Jesus Christ, and he is here with us. We are gathered in his name. So on Christ’s behalf, I say this to you: The doors of the church are locked. Either you kill each other right here in your hatred and then I will celebrate your funeral gratis, or you use this opportunity to be reconciled together before I open the doors of the church. If that reconciliation happens, Christ will truly become your Lord, and I will know that I am becoming your pastor and your priest. That decision is now yours.”

For the first time the congregation was required to face – full-on – the consequences of its disunity. Offered no get-out clause, they were reconciled one to another. The church doors were opened and they streamed out, praising God. That was the best of Easters! “All afternoon I could hear singing, ululations, happy voices and laughter. I knew this was a whole new life for I’billin.”

Reading this account lifts the heart. We can almost hear the dams of resentment burst and the joy being released, bubbling over like a pure, swiftly-running stream.

READ MORE

Our Easter services are unlikely to include such high drama or clear prophetic challenge by the clergy! But if we are faithfully living the liturgy, we may be granted a glimpse of something beautiful and new which can open our eyes afresh to God’s long-standing invitation of love to us. The giving and the receiving of forgiveness brings joy. Are there people we need to forgive, quietly, without fanfare; people we almost don’t notice bearing a grudge against because we have been holding it for so long?

Forgiveness is complex and it is never for us to stand in judgment on another’s unforgiveness. There may be people we cannot forgive. There may be things for which we struggle to forgive ourselves. Could these be situations to lay before a trusted, wise person who may be able to help us find a new freedom in God?

The story of Easter day is not straightforward. It is confusing and frightening, full of loose ends. Wherever the angel of the Lord went, they terrified people.

In our Easter gospel reading from Matthew, we are told that the guards to the tomb were so afraid of the bright angel that they shook and became like dead men. The two Marys were frightened too, and the angel sought to reassure: “Do not be afraid, for I know you are looking for Jesus”.

Afraid, yet filled with joy, they ran to tell the disciples that something irregular and hopeful was happening. Afraid, yet filled with joy, they then met Jesus on the road, who in turn comforted them “Do not be afraid.” So much fear and trembling in the ecstasy, and why wouldn’t there be?

We are invited into something new at Easter. Will we say yes to Jesus? We may be afraid, afraid to hope, afraid to believe, afraid of being disappointed.

We may be afraid yet filled with joy, like the Marys were, as we recognise him for ourselves, hiding in plain sight, more beautiful and more familiar than we ever imagined. In the words of the poet Kabir: “Look what happens to the scale when love holds it ... it stops working”.

LATEST STORIES