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It pays to pay attention to words.
Good writers make sure that the words they use illuminate the story or the idea they intend to communicate. Placement matters. Words and phrases are carefully chosen and given their order for a reason.
Saint Matthew is a good writer. We can visualize the scene he’s describing for us: Jesus, Peter, James and John head up a mountain by themselves, slowly hiking up the trail. Once they reach the top, Jesus changes before them. His clothes become dazzling white. His face shines brightly. And then two others instantly appear and begin speaking with him. Matthew tells us it’s Moses and Elijah—they represent the Law and the Prophets, the foundation of Holy Scripture.
Peter gets all gushy and proclaims that it would be spectacular if he and the Zebedee boys could build a few shelters for Jesus and his friends. And while he’s still exuberantly speaking, the fog rolls in. However, rather than dimming things down, it shines brightly too. Suddenly a voice from the cloud declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!”
It’s all too much to comprehend, so the three disciples panic and buckle to the ground in fear. Jesus gently comes over to them, touches them on the shoulders, and says, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And with that the miraculous scene is over.
Moses, Elijah, the array of dazzlingly light, all of it just disappears. Only Jesus, Peter, James and John remain.
Matthew describes something the other gospel writers—that is Mark, Luke, and John—leave out. When the voice comes from that brilliant cloud, it’s only Matthew who describes how Peter, James, and John collapse in extreme fear. And he’s the only one to write about Jesus’ words to them: Get up and do not be afraid.
Those are the very first words Jesus utters to them after they are commanded to listen to Jesus. The voice from the cloud—God—declares that Jesus is God’s beloved Son and that the disciples should listen to him. Matthew then tells us what Jesus next said to them. Those words they should listen to.
Get up and do not be afraid.
Holy Scripture seems concerned with our potential and real fears. “Do not be afraid” or some variation of that phrase appears well over a hundred times in the Bible. When God shows up to make a covenant with Abram way back in Genesis, God proclaims, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield.” At the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, Jesus appears to St. John the Divine, places his hand on him and declares, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last.” In between those books, the phrase “fear not” keeps coming up again and again: when Joshua leads the people of Israel, when the Angel Gabriel appears before Mary, when Paul writes to Timothy. And this time, to ensure we’re paying attention, we get the instruction beforehand to notice the words of Jesus. “Listen to him,” God instructs from the cloud. And then Jesus says, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
In his extraordinary book Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales explores situations where our amygdala — that reptilian brain of ours — kicks in and takes over the rational qualities of our brain. Think fight or flight. Think deer caught in the headlights. Think landing a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier in the middle of pitch black night and coming in too low. One of the scenarios he explores that piqued my interest given my love of the outdoors is hikers lost in the woods.
Sometimes when hikers get off course—that is when the place they think they should be on the map doesn’t match their physical local—they panic. There’s a phrase for it, “woods shock.” Gonzales learns about it from an expert in neuroscience. He writes, “‘Woods shock’ is a term for the fear associated with complete loss of spatial orientation. None of the rational abilities that the victim had before being lost are useful to him anymore. In severe cases, the actions of even the most experienced outdoorsmen can seem inexplicable. Hikers have abandoned full backpacks; hunters have left their guns behind.” Mistakes snowball due to the ramping up of the fear.
Which sounds a bit like what happens when a difficult diagnosis comes from the doctor. Or we get hit with an unexpected financial crisis. Or papers are served. Or it feels like our world is on fire. Or the countless other times life gets so overwhelming and we end up falling to the ground.
“This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” “Get up and do not be afraid.”
If I’m honest, there’s one thing about Matthew’s depiction of the disciples falling to the ground and being overcome by fear that seems odd. What are they afraid of? I mean, here they are on the very top of the mountain, Jesus literally transforms before them and two of the most revered forebears of Judaism appear. Peter’s so overcome by the moment that he begins babbling about building shelters. With the shining cloud and God’s voice declaring that Jesus is a beloved child, they see Jesus’ true glory alight in his face. It’s all so amazing and wonderful that every moment after would pale in comparison.
But that’s when they’re overcome with exceeding fear, as Matthew penned it in the Greek. Not just fear, but amped up fear. They’re terrified. They got the living daylights scared out of them. The amygdala kicks in. They see Jesus as he ultimately will be in the kingdom of God, face and clothes radiating like the sun, completely enveloped in awe-inspiring glory, and they tremble like never before. It’s all too much to take in. It’s all too wonderful. All too unbelievably glorious and sublime. All too holy.
So they drop like dead weights, overcome by fright. And Jesus comes alongside them, telling them not to be afraid. Jesus himself alone, Matthew writes. Nobody else. Just him. As they knew him before, not as his transfigured self. Just the carpenter’s son from Nazareth.
I sometimes wonder in life if what’s so overcoming is the beauty of it all. We don’t get up because the moment before us would cause us to shine brighter than the sun—be it a new career path, an opportunity to positively alter someone’s journey, a life-giving relationship—and it all seems too good to be true. We’re afraid that the other shoe will drop, or that it’ll all come tumbling down, and so we stay where we are because at least we know what that’s like. We don’t want to imagine how much better it could be when we allow the light of Christ to shine on us. It’s just too amazing to imagine, so we prefer the ground. “Get up, Jesus says to us. “Do not be afraid/“
I also sometimes wonder about those dark times because even in the midst of them the light can break through the cracks. When I think about my dad’s bout with cancer 14 years ago now—while heart wrenchingly painful—it allowed us the chance for us to truly connect one last time, something we hadn’t done for quite a few years prior to his death because of the way life goes sometimes. The last time I saw him alive he told me how proud he was of me and who I had become, words that continue to shine around me even now.
Even in this tired old world of ours, we catch glimpses of God’s glory and beauty. We see Jesus, who comes offer redemption to those parts of our lives that have been filled with pain. In a moment, something changes and the light comes streaming in and it overwhelms the darkness. And we’re overcome by it all. Shocked. Afraid. Because we cannot fathom it being this new way. So we fall to ground, quaking.
He comes up beside us, softly placing a hand on our shoulder. We want to listen to him, but sometimes we’re afraid. “Get up,” he says gently, helping us to our feet. “Don’t be afraid.” And then he leads us on the way.
The glimpses we get of the transcendent glory of God—those epiphanies—can both overwhelm us and scare the living pants off of us. They become too much to fully comprehend. But they sustain is. They soothe our souls that have been battered by the changes and chances of this life. They give us hope. They allow us to trust, to listen, and to respond.
“Get up and do not be afraid.” Amen.
The Rt. Rev. Phil LaBelle