The Barrier of Fear

I'm reading the book The Gospel of Mark by Amy-Jill Levine.  Today I read her thoughts on the transfiguration in Mark (or the metamorphosis of Jesus).  If you remember the passage in Mark 9, once Peter suggests that they build three tents; which must not have been a good idea.  Verse 6 says, "He did not know what to say, for they were terrified."  Levine says that this phrase is also used when the disciples are waiting for Jesus in the Garden of Gesthemane (Mark 14:40). 

I thought about the idea of not knowing what to say because you are afraid.  It happens to us, doesn't it? What do you say at a funeral or at the bedside of a person in the hospital? We don't know what to day - we are afraid of saying the wrong thing, or making something worse than it already is. Maybe we are afraid of the situation itself. Whatever it is, we are afraid, and sometimes we don't know what to day or what to do.

Fear can be an obstacle, can't it - a barrier to doing what needs to be done. A barrier to offering words of kindness or forgiveness, to lifting someone up who needs help. A barrier to spreading the good news. Levine points out that in the last chapter of Mark, the women who come to the tomb are afraid when they find the tomb is empty.  "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." 

The thing is, though, that we know that they eventually did tell people.  Levine says that, "fear yielded to faith and then action." Obstacles don't have to be permanent barriers to moving forward into the will of God.  Even though the suggestion of building tents wasn't a good one, Peter did respond, even with words that weren't helpful, and then he followed Jesus down the mountain.  Later Peter betrayed Jesus (out of fear), but then promised to love God's people.  The disciples were afraid in the garden, but eventually, they served Jesus. We don't have to continue in fear - we are empowered to move through it.