He is Risen indeed! Alleluia! What words and feelings come to mind when you think of Easter?

What about: alarmed, trembling, bewildered, fled, afraid. These aren’t our typical pastel and pasteurized Easter words and feelings. But these 5 words come from the Mark 16 (NIV) account of the resurrection and are some of the adjectives and verbs attributed to the women who first arrived at the tomb. Imagine with me a time in which you experienced…

Alarm in your nervous system,

Trembles throughout your body,

Bewilderment in your brain, 

Fleeing in your feet, 

And feelings of fear.

If you’re anything like me, the sensation I feel in my body when imaging those descriptors is less than pleasant (and is further accompanied and compounded by feelings of guilt, shame, and loneliness). For much of my life, I was taught that fear is bad and that feelings were worse and that I just needed to believe in God and everything would be okay. Unfortunately, this happened almost exclusively at the expense of my emotional health, and I developed into my adulthood the less healthy coping mechanisms of minimizing and dismissing my own feelings (especially “bad” ones) in favor of only the truth that God is bigger than it all and thus my feelings don’t matter. 

But in 2022, after an ongoing 2+ years of global pandemic and after leaving my job last fall with nothing lined up next, I am much more acquainted with fear than ever before in my life. What do the women at the tomb and I share in our fear? Unmet expectation. Something unfamiliar. Facing the unknown. A shattered illusion of control over the future. I thought I was going to still be a middle school science teacher in April 2022. The women thought the stone would still be in front of the tomb. I thought I’d find a job in like two weeks in this “employee market.” The women thought they’d be able to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. What we found instead has thrown us off our plan. What we see, or rather don’t see, in front of us is different from what we envisioned. What do we do? How do we process and proceed? How do we know what is safe? How do we know whom to trust? 

For Mary Magdalene, we know the rest of the story. She weeps, Jesus reveals Himself to her and honors her by allowing her to see Him first, and she gets to tell the disciples that Christ was alive! For us, our stories are still unfolding, and so much has not yet been revealed. So what do we do with our fear of the unknown?

It’s super tempting to turn this into a “Jesus lives so you shouldn’t feel afraid of anything!!!” kind of message that for years I had internalized. But precisely because Jesus lives is why we can also allow ourselves to feel afraid. It’s not one at the expense of the other. Jesus meets Mary in her fear and tears, and while she initially mistakes Him for a gardener, she actually encounters a God more powerful than death itself. And this God doesn’t negate her very human response of fear of the unknown and unexpected. This risen God provides a hope that can hold her fear in tension. Not dismiss it, or minimize it, but exist alongside it. 

For me fear highlights my limited scope. I can’t see the future. I don’t know what’s next. I am terrified of expecting and waiting and hoping for things because my lived experience is riddled with disappointment and failure from people who were supposed to be safe for me. And without a risen Christ who defeated death, that fear would be accompanied by hopelessness. Why trust? Why try? Why care? 

An expectation-defying open tomb meant a resurrected Jesus who met Mary face-to-face in her fear of the unknown. A God who can bring the dead to life surely can provide protection, help, refuge, and healing for my jaded, fearful, human heart. 

And He has. 

So I don’t have to forsake my very real psychological and physiological experiences of fear for abstract platitudes. My confession that I feel afraid makes way for a faith deeper than mindless mantras to "not fear." On this side of Easter Sunday, we don’t have to choose one or the other. Because Jesus is risen, I can feel afraid and also have faith that God sees me and meets my needs when I’m feeling fear (and guilt, and shame, and loneliness). I still don’t have a job, mask mandates are being removed mid-flight, there is unrest and war around our earth, I don’t know what the future holds and also the fear I’m feeling this Easter is present in conjunction with my hope in the risen Immanuel. The risen God with us. The risen God who conquered death with us. The risen God who met a weeping Mary with us. The risen God who cares, who provides, who sees, who protects, who loves with us. The risen God is with me when I'm afraid and becomes the object of my hope as I look toward the future.

So this Easter, please join me in practicing trust while feeling afraid. I have feelings of fear and God is here. Alleluia!

—Tory Lang