Fear and Great Joy
Easter Sunday
Nobody preaches the fear.
I know because I haven’t.
I have preached the joy, and I should have. The tomb is open. The angel blazes like lightning. Christ is risen. The women run with news that changes everything.
But Matthew will not let me preach the joy without the fear.
He says they left the tomb with fear and great joy.
Both.
Not fear first and joy later. Not fear swallowed up by joy before they had taken a single step down the road. Fear and great joy, running alongside each other.
We imagine Easter making everything clear. Settled. Calm. We imagine that if resurrection really became real to us, the trembling would cease. The divided heart would finally heal. Fear would retreat and joy would take over.
But that is not what Matthew says.
Matthew says the first people to carry Easter in their bodies carried it with fear still alive in them. And then Jesus met them on the road and said, “Do not be afraid.”
You do not say that to people who are no longer afraid.
You say it to people whose hearts are still racing. To people who need to know that fear has not placed them outside the reach of the risen Christ.
Because fear is not always the opposite of faith.
Sometimes it is what resurrection feels like when it first arrives.
Before the women even reach the tomb, the ground shakes. An angel descends. The stone is rolled back. The guards—professional soldiers posted there to make sure the finality of what had happened stayed undisturbed—collapse like dead men.
Matthew is not painting a peaceful spring sunrise. He is describing a world coming apart.
Because that is what the resurrection is:
Not a mood.
Not a metaphor.
Not a softer way of saying that life goes on.
It is the collapse of the old world.
The world where death gets the last word.
The world where love is beautiful but fragile.
The world where self-protection looks like wisdom.
The world where the crucified are buried and the powerful remain.
That world begins to crack open on Easter morning.
No wonder they are afraid.
If Jesus has been raised from the dead, then the world is not what we thought it was. Death is not final. Fear is not realism. The powers that looked permanent are already passing away. The crucified one has been vindicated. Love has not lost.
That is joy.
And that is terrifying.
Because if it is true, the resurrection is not only comfort for someday. It is a claim on today. It reaches into the life already being lived. Into habits. Into calculations. Into all the quiet ways a life gets organized around the assumption that death wins.
I know that life from the inside.
The heart kept on a short leash. Love carefully rationed. Forgiveness extended selectively. The guard maintained and called wisdom. The lips saying Christ is risen while the days are quietly arranged around the assumption that death gets the last word after all.
So when Matthew says the women ran with fear and great joy, he is not describing a spiritual failure. He is describing what it feels like when resurrection first breaks into a human life.
Something in us knows this is good.
Something in us knows this changes everything.
And something in us trembles because if it is true, the old life cannot remain intact.
Maybe that is where you are as you read this.
Not in a room full of people where the organ is playing and the lilies are bright.
Alone with a page. Carrying something that has no clean name. A grief that has not loosened its grip. A loss that reshaped the geography of your life and you still haven’t found your footing in the new terrain.
A long, quiet erosion of hope that didn’t announce itself all at once. It just slowly made the world smaller and grayer until you realized one day that you were going through the motions of living without expecting anything to bloom again.
Or maybe it is not grief exactly.
Maybe it is the fear beneath the fear: the suspicion, held quietly for years, that the life you are living is not the life you were made for, and you no longer know how to find your way back.
Maybe it is the exhaustion of someone who has been strong for too long and has nothing left to generate.
Maybe you are not sure you believe any of it anymore.
Hear the gospel.
Jesus does not wait for fearless people. He meets frightened people on the road.
Not after they have mastered themselves. Not after they have found the right words and risen into proper Easter confidence. They ran with fear and great joy, and Jesus met them there.
There.
On the road.
In the middle.
Before the fear was gone.
Fear has many forms. There is the fear of dying, yes. But there is also the fear of loving when love may cost something real. The fear of forgiving when forgiveness feels like exposure. The fear of hoping again after disappointment. The fear that the way of Christ is not noble nonsense, but the grain of the universe.
And beneath all of them is the old assumption: protect yourself, because in the end death wins anyway.
Easter shatters that assumption.
The resurrection does not abolish fear by pretending there is nothing left to fear. The women still live under Rome. The world is still wounded. The cross was still real. The nails still happened.
Easter is not denial.
It is defiance.
It is God’s refusal to let death have the final word. God’s refusal to let fear name reality. God’s declaration that the life and love of Jesus are not a beautiful failure, but the deepest truth of all things.
And because he is alive, fear is no longer final.
Real, yes.
Powerful, yes.
Final, no.
That is why Jesus says, “Do not be afraid,” not because nothing frightening remains, but because he has gone through death and come out the other side. Because from that morning on, fear never again gets to speak last.
Fear does not disqualify. Grief does not disqualify. Exhaustion does not disqualify. A divided heart does not disqualify. Whatever you are carrying as you read this, the road under your feet is still a road on which Christ can be met.
The women took hold of his feet and worshiped him. And Jesus said again, “Do not be afraid.”
Again.
Because he is patient with frightened people. Because he is not ashamed to meet us while our hearts are still racing. Because he would rather have trembling disciples on the road than fearless ones who never move.
Do not mistake your fear for the absence of faith.
It may be the place where resurrection is pressing closest.
The women ran with fear and great joy.
And Jesus met them on the road.
Christ is risen.
Do not be afraid.
Hey friends, I’m really happy with how this devotional turned out. But writing it also led to what I think is an even better sermon. That’s part of why I write these. You can find it below: