Resurrection and the Worrier

I have mixed feelings about the future. I know I am supposed to look forward to it, but experience has shown me that the future is not always an improvement on the present. My health can decline. My dreams may dissolve into regret. I do not really know what lies before me, and even when I do, it sometimes turns out to be something I dread. Even Jesus shuddered as he contemplated the looming shadow of the cross in Gethsemane.


It is hard to deal with the anxiety that comes hand in hand with the future. We cannot plan for it. We do not seem to be able to overcome it by sheer force of will. “You do not get over being afraid by trying not to be afraid,” Stanley Hauerwas warns. “Indeed we usually find that attempts to will our way out of being afraid only make us more fearful.” According to Hauerwas the most effective remedy for fear is to replace it with a different kind of fear. This sounds counterintuitive. But commonplace fear is really only a lower order experience of what in a nobler form we refer to as awe.

This was what Jesus meant when he warned, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). On the surface this sounds as if Jesus is merely replacing one threat with another. It is as if he said, “You think it’s bad that they can kill you? Just wait until you see what God can do!” But when we look beyond the sad events of holy week to the shining hope of resurrection, we see his words in a different light. We can be killed but we cannot be dispossessed. No earthly power can remove us from the sheltering love of God. The one who has power to do more than our enemies has also numbered the hairs of our head. He does not forget the sparrow that is sold for small change. He will not forget us. We have nothing to fear from the future.