[By Sabbatical Interim Pastor Robin Walton]

I read Diana Butler Bass in my inbox. She is a Christian historian and author. I was introduced to her in seminary, but she is very accessible to the average reader. She follows the standard lectionary and comments on it.

This past Sunday was the next-to-last Sunday of Easter tide. The scripture was:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid

The end of the Easter season is also the end of the first half of the Christian year.

The whole of the first half of the Christian is riddled with fear. 

The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” (Luke 1:30)

Think of how many times you heard, “Fear not.”

Fear is a basic emotion and a necessary contributor to human survival; it is one of seven “universal emotions,” something experienced by nearly everyone around the world. And it is part of our biology:

It’s the work of your amygdala, a tiny almond-shaped structure in your brain. Sensory signals alert it; in turn, it triggers a cascade of activity, deluging your body with messages that widen your eyes, prick your ears, accelerate your heart, quicken your breathing, wrench your stomach, moisten your palms, and launch a full-body, organ-clenching, corpuscle-filling chill…

She heard in a sermon once, “The resurrection changed the disciples — they moved from ‘a faith based in fear to one based in love’” (Easter sermon by Rev. Ed Bacon, circa1995). The resurrection was thus the fulcrum of the church year. Fear on one side, love on the other.

He went on: 

“The opposite of fear is love. The opposite of love is fear, not hate.”

Our political culture embraced fear as a marketing strategy (as has our culture as a whole, news reporting, advertising, weather forecasting, on and on).

It is an effective way to gain power over others and manipulate entire populations. And yet,

”Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you….’ When he had said this, he breathed on them…”

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.

The door opens toward love — the love of God, the love of neighbor.

Perhaps that’s what is meant by resurrection. Being raised from the deadened weight of fear to love.

God of love, we find ourselves swimming in the Sea of Fear. If we are to fully experience the resurrection message, it will be because our hearts embrace love over and over again. You birthed us into the Sea of Love, but our bodies quickly taught us there were things to fear. Help us reclaim the Waters of Love as our birthright and salvation. Amen.

Inspired by Sunday Musings, as found in The Cottage, by Diana Butler Bass, 24 May 2025.

And then I saw this post on Richard Rohr (my other inbox input) from a reader: 

I have often wondered—am I the only person who has entertained the thought that planet Earth is purgatory? I think of it as a temporary place where lives are born and die and rise again—a place of great suffering and pain in the shadow of hope, love, joy, and sorrow. It’s a place of transformation and struggles, embedded with wisdom and truth that love is possible. And in my experience, only in love do we glimpse the divine experience. 
— Michael W.