Quick Summary:

It’s coded into our autonomic nervous system; hardwired into our brain. Two choices in response to perceived threat: fight or flight. Only they’re not really choices, because it’s not really a decision we’re talking about, but a reaction— aided by the near instantaneous secretion of hormones, a quickened pulse, and the acceleration of other bodily functions—which flood the body and prepare us either for fight or for flight. But what do you do when neither fighting nor fleeing is an option?

You hunker down; you stew; and as stress levels go up your ability to be calm and circumspect goes down. This is the very context with which our gospel reading begins: doors locked, lookouts posted, disciples cowering in fear. Into this fearful, anxious context he comes, and the first words out of his mouth are not: I TOLD YOU SO or WHY DIDN’T YOU BELIEVE ME! or YOU UNFAITHFUL, COWARDLY, DENYING INGRATES! But …PEACE BE WITH YOU. And then he shows them his hands and his side. And this revelation becomes for the disciples, for us, not simply the source of his identity, but also the resource for our transformation; for our own resurrection.

Participating in Seattle's March for Science yesterday (4/22) got me thinking about connections between this post-resurrection story from John's gospel and our vocations as those who, with those first disciples, have been liberated from fear.