Of Easter and Double-Dog-Dares ...

I double dog dare you!

When I was 11, it was the ultimate threat. You could maybe slip away from a simple dare, you could sometimes even evade a double dare, but there was no getting away from the dreaded double-dog-dare. When that challenge was thrown in your face and you saw the expectant and fearful looks on the faces of your friends, the meaning of life snapped into instant focus. Somehow, despite the screaming voices in your head and the butterflies churning around in your stomach, you knew you had to step up.

And so you did.

Fear is a strange thing. It is one of those absolutely common characteristics that make us all human. Sometimes we are victimized by our fear, sometimes we rise above it, but it remains always there, always influencing our choices, defining our makeup, shaping our destiny. Many of our moments of many of our days contain opportunities for fear, usually small frights that are easily overcome. Sometimes, though, there are those great fears, those double-dog-dares, that challenge us at the very core of who we are. Those contests can make us great. Or they can destroy us.

What amazes me most about fear, though, is that it is not real. Fear is not how we react when bad things happen, it’s how we react BEFORE the bad things happens. Fear is the reaction to what we anticipate, what we expect to happen IF we do or do not do a thing. Fear exists, in most part, within ourselves, in past memories and shared experiences and deeply ingrained expectations. It does not take much, no, hardly anything, to bring it up. It comes, whether we bid it or not. The challenge is to not let it destroy us.

Which leads to the answer to the most important question: how do I conquer fear?

The world is full of scared people. You hear it in their voices as they talk about their retirement accounts, the markets, their jobs. You see it in their faces when they hear their neighbor’s bad news and wonder, “What if that happens to me?” The news headlines scream that we should be even more afraid, of terrorism and war, of unemployment and financial ruin, of even each other. It’s a wonder that we haven’t all crumpled into a fetal position in some corner by now.

But we can’t live like that. When the world throws you the old double-dog-dare, you have to answer. The alternative is shame and humiliation and rejection. You have to find, somewhere within yourself, the courage to face that fear and take that dare and grow, live, even triumph.

When the women who followed Jesus traveled to his tomb on that first Easter Sunday, they were afraid. Afraid of the aftermaths from the horrid events of the past Friday, afraid that they wouldn’t be able to roll the stone away from the tomb’s entrance. Then, finding the stone moved and the tomb emptied, they faced a whole new level of fright on seeing the angel and hearing his words. And in its original ending, Mark leaves us in this very human place …

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Mark 16:8

But, of course, we know that they didn’t. We know that somehow, in the face of the most amazing and frightening moment in all of history, they faced up to the angel’s double-dog-dare and they did go out and they did tell, and wow, did they tell! We are the heirs of their courage. We are their victory over fear.

So will we do the same? Will we find the power to overcome the fear of what might be in the awesome witness of what was, what is and what will be? For this is the promise of Easter, He has left the tomb behind, has put fear and terror and death behind him and beckons us forward to a place where we can conquer our fear and change ourselves and change our lives and change our world.

This Jesus, this living Jesus, is the one who is daring us now, double-dog-daring us to live with him, to come out from our own tombs and face the fears inside us and overcome them with the Spirit he has given us in our baptism. What will you dare to do in this brave new Easter world?