Fear II: What does fear look like?

Matthew 26: 36-75 (end of chapter)

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” 

Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again he went away for the second time and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” 

Again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.” 

While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; with him was a large crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.” At once he came up to Jesus and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him. Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you are here to do.” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him. 

Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?” 

At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But all this has taken place, so that the scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted him and fled. Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest, in whose house the scribes and the elders had gathered. 

But Peter was following him at a distance, as far as the courtyard of the high priest; and going inside, he sat with the guards in order to see how this would end. Now the chief priests and the whole council were looking for false testimony against Jesus so that they might put him to death, but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward and said, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days.’ “

The high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?” But Jesus was silent. Then the high priest said to him, “I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your verdict?” They answered, “He deserves death.” 

Then they spat in his face and struck him; and some slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, you Messiah! Who is it that struck you?” 

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before all of them, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.” When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” Again he denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.” Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know the man!” At that moment the cock crowed. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. 

As I mentioned last week, at the centre of the Christian story is a narrative of terror. There is an event that is so disruptive, and so horrible, that if it happened to us, to someone that we knew and loved, we’d be completely traumatised. Our familiarity with the story makes it difficult for us to have a genuine encounter with the enormity of it. Unfortunately, the Gospel accounts don’t help us too much. They were written before the age of the novel with its character development, and psychological exploration, so it’s hard to enter emotionally into the story. They don’t move us in the way that we are accustomed to being moved.

So, we will have to use our imaginations a little, as we explore our theme of fear in the Gospel texts. In this passage that I have read, which we could call the ‘arrest sequence’ from the Passion narrative, there is a lot of fear, though it is not often named as such. However, if we put ourselves in their shoes, it’s clear that the characters are afraid, and that they have reason to be afraid. And we see this fear manifesting in a range of different ways. I want to have a look at some of these ways, to reflect on the question – what does fear look like? Because often, fear looks like something else…anger, withdrawal, interference, quarrelsomeness – and what it looks like is different depending on a person’s temperament. My goal in asking this question is to ponder how we can learn to recognise fear in ourselves, and in others…and also how we can move toward becoming free of fear’s paralysing or distorting effects on us.

In the arrest sequence we see some classic manifestations of fight and flight – our basic human responses to feeling afraid or threatened.

There is the crowd, sent to arrest Jesus, who come heavily armed. Without checking to see if he would come peacefully, their first action is that they ‘laid hands on him.’ A ‘brutalise first, ask questions later’ approach. Jesus calls them on this, with great presence of mind in the midst of the tumult, by saying ‘Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me.’ Jesus confronts them with the fea—even cowardice - that lies at the heart of their heavily armed approach. What are you afraid of, that you had to come and get me like I was an armed criminal? Why did you wait til the cover of darkness instead of doing what you wanted to do in the clear light of day?

And, we can see the way that violence begets violence…or that the fear and expectation of resistance generates resistance, where another approach may not have. ‘Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.’ Again, Jesus has the presence of mind to put into words what’s going on at the heart of the struggle – ‘those who live by the sword will die by the sword.’ Fear sets up a cycle of action and reaction…and further reaction, that can only be stopped by someone who steps out of the ‘fight/flight’ dualism, and refuses to react in a way that is dictated by the circumstances. In Luke’s gospel we are told that Jesus heals the severed ear, showing how compassion can halt the flow of aggression.

Later, we can see another manifestation of institutional fear, when those gathered mock Jesus…a sequence of events that’s described in more detail in the other Gospels. People who would not have laid a hand on Jesus when he was out walking around and teaching, suddenly have power over him and give vent to their aggression. This mockery seems to me to be not uncommon when there is a conflict with a feared ‘other’, and then one of the ‘others’ is put in a powerless position. I’m thinking, for example of the events of Abu Ghraib. Mockery and humiliation are often fear responses, as they involve a kind of indirectness in addressing grievances, or arise when the person doing the mocking feels smaller than the subject of their derision. To laugh at another makes us, for the time being, feel bigger, freer, and scarier, than the person we fear. And, fear often destabilises our humanity. When we feel threatened, instead of being able to discern what is a good action, and what is a cruel, or childish one, we are at the mercy of other people’s example. When we are afraid, it is hard to make good judgements.

And what of the disciples? As Jesus is taken away by the armed mob, we are told ‘all the disciples deserted him and fled.’ Much as they would all, probably, have asserted with Peter on the walk to the garden of Gethsemane, that they would never desert him, they all do. I suspect we would all like to think that we would have exemplary courage if we were plunged into a crisis…that we would be the one to think of others, or put ourselves at risk in an emergency. Probably, the truth is, that only a few of us really would. It is impossible to know what that level of fear is like unless we’re in it. The good news is that this is not the end of the story for any of these fleeing, deserting disciples. And in the end, probably many of them did end up being persecuted, or dying, for the one that they ran away from in the garden. It took their resurrection experience of Christ, and the events of Pentecost, to transform their fear into courage.

Peter’s experience is particularly emphasised in this passage, as he famously denies three times that he was with Jesus. What I find interesting is the increasing level of vehemence in his denial. The first time, he simply shrugs off the question. The second time, he makes an oath. The third time, he began to curse as well as swearing an oath, and the text has an exclamation mark “I do not know the man!” This is a hallmark of fear. It’s amazing how verbally intense and dogmatic we can become when trying to press home a point, when we are afraid. Of course, Peter had very good reason to be afraid and to try to get his message across – if he hadn’t he might well have ended up killed alongside Jesus. Although, I note that the chief priests only had Jesus arrested – there isn’t any sign that they were out to get the others too, so one wonders if the fear of the disciples had more to do with being associated with the guy who was going down, rather than fear for their own lives.

Leaving that aside, I think it’s worth reflecting on what is at stake for us, or what is going on internally when conversations get heated. When we shift from mildly, or even enthusiastically, discussing or debating something to cursing, or name-calling, or pointing our finger, or rolling our eyes – is it really because it is so important to the well-being of the world that the other person is convinced by our argument? Or is it because we are afraid…because we are using that argument to shore up a worldview that we have hung our identity on, or to defend a situation where we feel in danger of being distressed or disadvantaged? How could that same conversation play out if our fears weren’t being hooked?

One of the remarkable features of the arrest and trial narratives in the Gospels is the way Jesus responds to questioning. Mostly, he refuses to answer. He is either silent, or turns the question back by saying ‘you say so’ or some other similar phrase. Occasionally he is rhetorical, or cryptic. But what he doesn’t do is try to get himself off the hook. He doesn’t fill the air with words of self-justification, or excuses, or defense. Often, when we feel attacked or accused, we get very verbal. We might feel that if we can just phrase it right, if we can argue well enough, that we can clear ourselves, even if the accusation is a just one. I wonder how much fear motivates our very many words – fear of being misunderstood, of unjustly criticised, of being judged.

Another thing that I notice about Jesus in this arrest sequence is that he doesn’t lose himself in the fear. He stays true to the person he has been throughout his ministry, not back-pedalling, or behaving in a way that undermines all that he had taught. Of all the people in the story, he is the one with the most reason to fear. And yet, it seems, he has more presence of mind and equilibrium than the others. He is the one who calls attention to the dynamics of what is happening, and he isn’t swept into aggression or argument. He doesn’t defend himself in the ways that he says he is capable of doing…by appealing to his Father for twelve legions of angels. Instead, he gives himself to the events, knowing that they are part of the cup that his Father wants him to drink. He remembers who he is, he stays with himself and his identity, rather than lying or masking himself to avoid pain.

Is he feeling fear? It’s possible to read these texts and assume that, through some superior knowledge and confidence in the outcome, Jesus was fearless. I don’t believe that. Jesus was a human, like you and me. No human faces the prospect of accusation, torture and death without feeling fear.

At the beginning of the passage I read, we see Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, suffering. We don’t know exactly what mixture of feelings he was experiencing, but I am convinced that fear was part of the mix, as he begs his Father to let the cup pass from him. Just as Peter denies three times, Jesus prays three times, in his anguish, and loneliness. And here we see what is different between Jesus and Peter. I don’t wish to be pious or simplistic about how we learn to cope with serious fear or anxiety. But what we see in Jesus is that, by sharing his fear with God, by taking his fear into the garden of prayer, Jesus was given the strength he needed to move through the coming hours internally intact. As I have said, I don’t believe that this prayer session stopped Jesus from feeling fear any more. And, we notice that it wasn’t as simple as pray once and be done with it – he had to return repeatedly to say the same words, to express the same feelings. But we can see the outcome of that process in his centredness, his equanimity, and his humaneness through all that followed.

Our own fear comes out in different ways – maybe, like the crowd, we become bullies when we are threatened. Or, maybe, like the soldiers, we mock the people we fear. Maybe, like the disciples, we simply avoid situations…the equivalent of running away. Maybe, like Peter, we are experts in denial – possibly we deny our negative feelings and pretend they’re not there. Or we emphatically lie, attempting to deflect any unwanted idea or attention to something that we can’t face, or don’t want others to know.

There are other ways fear manifests that aren’t in this part of the story, but we are familiar with them in our home, work, and community life. Fear can take the form of excessive complaining, or nitpicking. It can take the form of emotional eruptions. It can look like shyness, withdrawal, or aloofness. It can take the form of inappropriateness in group or social situations. It can look like manipulation, rather than outright aggression.

When conflict arises in a group setting, it is often worth looking underneath the conflict in search of the anxiety that’s driving the behaviours. That anxiety will often not be explicit, or even known to the person that is being driven by it.

I’d like to invite you into a week of attention to fea—in yourself, or in circumstances around you where there is some intensity of feeling or conflict. This week, if you find yourself in the midst of a nasty interaction ask the question: ‘what am I afraid of here?’ or ‘what might the other person be feeling afraid of?’ And see if, either in the moment, or later, you can find the space to bring that fear to God, and receive what you need to step free…even a little bit… from the negativity.