"How are you feeling, Uncle Herb?" This question was posed by my father to my then 80 year old great uncle as Herb stood in his kitchen washing the dishes. Now you need to understand that Herb was one of ten brothers - and when this question was put to him, he was the only surviving brother and had been for nearly 20 years. How are you feeling Uncle Herb? With a wry smile breaking across his face and a twinkle in his eye he responded, "If I felt any better, I'd be scared!"

If I felt any better, I'd be scared. I love that response. It contains a wonderful mixture of emotions that we don't always associate together: fear and joy. The joy that my great uncle Herb felt was completely understandable: the joy of making it to four score years, the joy at living so much longer than any of his other brothers, the joy at having two wonderful grown children, three grandchildren and being married to a woman who herself enjoyed good health. But in addition to expected joy, he also acknowledge an underlying fear - If I felt any better, I'd be scared. I used to think that Uncle Herb was just being funny with his statement - and he was being funny. But I think he also put his finger on a truth that is real for us on Easter.

Now it may seem odd to you that we would speak of both joy and fear on Easter. On Easter, we really do get the joy part of the story. Our traditional Easter celebrations give tremendous voice to our joy. We sing joyful hymns, the choirs, the brass, and the pipe organ offer their joyful music, we wear joyful clothes, we eat joyful food! Jelly beans and chocolate bunnies - does food get any more joyful than that? The symbols of this day joyfully proclaim new life and new beginnings: an empty tomb, graveyards looking like plowed fields, Easter lilies and other beautiful flowers, butterflies, and colored eggs. The joy of Easter finds expression in our worship and our feasting, in our words and in our mood - and it is a joy that grows out the startling experience that the women and the other disciples had on that first Easter morning - Jesus was not dead, but has risen from the grave and he is alive! Hallelujah! Is there a more joyful word that we can utter in our worship and praise? So we are all over the joy portion of this day. But joy and fear? On Easter?

We encounter this surprising mixture of feelings of joy and fear in the women who visited Jesus' tomb on that first Easter day. In Matthew's account of that first resurrection morning, it was not Mary Magdalene alone who made her way to the tomb, but Mary Magdalene and another Mary. And unlike the other three gospels, the women didn't arrive at the tomb to find the stone already rolled away, but they got to the tomb just in time to see all of the holy special effects - an angel decked out in heaven's finest raiment, a terrible earthquake that shook the ground, and the actual rolling away of the stone. This would certainly explain their initial fear - who wouldn't be scared to see that! Certainly the guards were! They tasted such fear that they shook like the earth and became like dead men. So the women's fear is certainly understandable - at least at the front end of the story. And what's more, because they were up so early, they may not have had time for a decent cup of coffee, and things seem a lot scarier before my first cup of coffee!

So the women's experience at the tomb begins with fear, but quickly a new emotion overtakes them: joy. For the angel that caused such alarm has a message of good news for them. "Do not be afraid (easy for you to say!); I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified (thanks for noticing the obvious!). He is not here (say what?); for he has been raised (no!), as he said (I guess he did mention it once or twice). Come, see the place where he lay (you're right - he is gone!). Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.' This is my message for you." Talk about being surprised by joy. The women came to the tomb to pay their last respects to their teacher and friend. He was the wisest, most loving person they had ever known. A man whose death made no sense to them. A man who had been cruelly and viciously taken away from them. And now he is alive! This was more than women ever hoped for - it is almost too much to take in. And yet, they knew, they knew that the angel spoke the truth. Not only did their eyes tell them that Jesus was not lying dead in the tomb - but the angel reminded them that this is what Jesus had told them - that he would rise. When he said it in the past, they must have thought that he was speaking figuratively, or hopefully, or something. People just don't get up from the grave. And besides, when he said it during his ministry, they never imagined that he would die so soon. There would be plenty of time to untangle his mysterious sayings about lying in the grave for three days and then rising from the dead. But he did say it - now they remembered.

Before they could even think about what to do next, the women start running to share this news - a day that started with heavy mournful steps, turned into a day with feet frozen in place by fear, and finally evolved into a day that was full of urgent running steps, purposeful steps that have a message of good news - great news! - to share with others. But Matthew includes one little detail that causes us to trip up while the women go running off - a small fact that slows us down while the women hasten to tell the other disciples. Matthew says of the women: "So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy." There's that fear again. We can understand the fear at the beginning of the story - there was a lot to be afraid of - angels, earthquakes, and comatose guards - but what is fear doing at this end of the story? Shouldn't their joy have overcome their fear? Or were they still dealing with lingering affects of seeing the angel and feeling the earthquake? Or, perhaps - this is a different fear. A fear, not driven by an awesome and mind-boggling display of heavenly, but by what the reality of the resurrection now meant to them now and into the future.

Have your ever had an experience that produced in you both fear and joy at the same time? An event in your life that was wonderful and life-changing, but because it was life-changing it caught you up short because now you have to reassess your future? This has happened to me on a number of occasions. The first time I can remember this confluence of joy and fear was when I graduated from high school. After commencement exercises, the graduation party lasted all night and was a fitting celebration. And when I got home, I cried my eyes out - with both fear and great joy. Joy at having accomplished what I set out do, and fear because now I had to grow up in ways that I didn't have to when I was in the more protective environment of high school. I felt that same mixture of fear and joy when Linda and I got married - not because I had any doubts about getting married, but because I knew that this incredibly joyful day meant that my life would never be the same - my future, my destiny was now caught up with another person. The birth of our children and being ordained as a pastor were also similar experiences. Great joy and fear - mingled together - joy because something we have desired so deeply and that is so significant in our lives has come to pass - fear because our lives will never be the same and we must now grow into this new reality.

This, I believe, is the great joy and fear that the women feel as they run from the tomb on the first Easter morning. The resurrection is the fulfillment of their deepest (if unspoken) hope: Jesus is not dead, the grace he offered will not evaporate, the community that they have known will continue. That is the joy. But the resurrection also means that their lives will never be the same and that they are now responsible to live into this new reality. For in the resurrection, the women and us are assured that God in Jesus Christ is with us always - that he will be with to the close of the age. While this is a great comfort - our greatest comfort and joy - it also means that we must consciously and conscientiously attend to that relationship. Our faith will never be casual on this side of the resurrection. In the resurrection, Jesus is not a quaint idea, but a living person who in the words of the hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross "demands my soul, my life, my all." I am not suggesting that this is a bad thing - but it is an awesome and scary prospect. Living in light of the resurrection also produces fear because we can no longer hide in ignorance about our future. We tend to think of the past as a known and fixed commodity and the future as an unknown and unknowable. But in the resurrection, it is the future that is known and it has the power to change our past. In the resurrection, we know the rest of the story. And we know that we know the rest of the story. We know how God's story ends - we know that God's purpose is not chaos and injustice and death, but peace and justice and life. And because we know the future, we are called to proclaim that future, to work for that future, to live that future - a fearful thing because it goes against the grain of what we know and what we are comfortable with.

A couple of days ago, Linda passed along to me a question that she had heard in some training that she went to - it is a question that really resonated with me in light of the resurrection. The question is this: "What are your pretending not to know?" What are you pretending not to know? This question gains it potency when we are stuck in life - when we feel like we don't know how to move forward. And the question assumes that we really do know but that we prefer the comfort of being stuck rather, and even the satisfaction of blaming others for our predicament rather than acting on what we know to be true - about ourselves, about others and about the world. It is a question that does not allow us to hide in feigned ignorance, but calls to reflection and action. I think this is the fear of the women as they leave the tomb. In light of the resurrection they could not pretend that they don't know what they should do and how they should live. They know that God calls them to risk everything because in the end, they will be with God. That is why they run with fear.

But while they run from the tomb with fear, they also run from the tomb, not just with joy, but with great joy. For while the truth of resurrection would forever change their lives, while the fact of resurrection would define their lives on God's terms, the reality of the resurrection was that they were not alone, that God loved them - so much that God would not only give us God's son, but would break the power of death in their lives. The resurrection called forth in them new faith, new directions, and new patterns for living - and at the same time, the resurrection assured them that their living would not be in vain, that God would be with them, that Jesus' love would sustain them.

Fear and great joy - at Easter. Yes, we feel both. Because in the resurrection our lives will never be the same - and for that we offer God our worship and praise.