Trusting Jesus to catch us

27 April, 2025 2nd Sunday Easter, Year C

John 20:19-31

Fear can be such a paralysing emotion. With its familiar twin, anxiety, it keeps us from acting or thinking constructively and clouds our awareness of grace. In this week’s gospel reading, the disciples are gathered in fear behind closed doors. They are terrified about what may happen next.

 

Suddenly, they find Jesus standing in their midst. He offers them his peace, showing them his hands and side. They are overjoyed and their fear is dispelled. This is no fleeting reassurance. He repeats his blessing of peace and exhorts them to go forth in courage. He breathes on them and confers on each of them, the gift of his spirit.

 

It is a sacred moment, preparing them for a time when he would no longer be physically present with them. Yet, his spirit would remain with them always. This would be no passive presence but a dynamic, enlivening, divine presence which would animate them. They would be his witnesses to his love and redemption throughout the world.

 

Jesus’s words of mission also foreshadow his words at his ascension: I am with you always (Matthew 28:20). It also foreshadows the coming of the Holy Spirit in the mighty wind of Pentecost.

 

The calling to a life of mission is not without risk. In his book, Flying, Falling and Catching: An Unlikely Story of Finding Freedom, Dutch priest, theologian and psychologist Henri Nouwen described a life changing encounter with a travelling trapeze troupe, the Flying Rodleighs. He was amazed at how they flew through the air. He befriended the troupe and even travelled for a short time with them.

 

Nouwen once asked Rodleigh, the troupe’s leader, the secret of a successful trapeze act. Rodleigh explained that, as a flyer, he had to have complete trust in his catcher. The secret was for the flyer to do nothing and trust the catcher to do everything, to catch him as he flew through the air and pull him safely onto the platform. In fact, the worst thing the flyer could do is to try and catch the catcher. If he tried to grab the catcher’s wrists, it could end disastrously for them both. Nouwen suggested this as a sublime metaphor for our invitation to let go of fear and trust God utterly in all the circumstances of our life and beyond.

 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once described faith, not as belief in certainty, but as the courage to live with uncertainty. The figure of Thomas in today’s gospel, wanting certainty, expresses the parts of our being which are still held back by fear and anxiety. We fear stepping forward into the unknown and allow our fears to sideline God’s promise of his abiding presence. Nevertheless, Jesus invites us to trust him completely. Like the catcher in Nouwen’s story, he promises to catch us as we fly through the air to him. He lovingly and unconditionally embraces all our fears, our frailty and our vulnerability. His peace enlivens our mission to go forth in courage and proclaim the good news. He is risen and, indeed, he will be with us always.

 

Sophie Clements

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