Breathing in Love, Breathing out Fear
Author Diana Butler Bass recounts how fear continued to accompany the disciples well after the resurrection:
If you remember back several weeks, you might recall the reading for the first Sunday of Easter:
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”… Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you….” When he had said this, he breathed on them…. [John 20:19–22].
…. The end of the Easter season is also the end of the first half of the Christian year. The cycle of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter focus on the story of Jesus—the promise of his coming, his birth, the light he brings to the world, the seriousness of his mission, his execution, and the mystery of his resurrection….
And here’s the odd thing, something I never really noticed until this year. Fear is foundational to the first half of the year. It isn’t just that the disciples were afraid after Jesus died. The story began—way back in Advent—with the angel telling Mary, “Fear not!”…
Six months later in the church year, Jesus’ story ends with “Peace I leave with you … do not let your hearts be afraid”.…
As the author of 1 John later wrote, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” [1 John 4:18]. I think that is the point of Jesus’ life, the story we retrace in the first half of the Christian year, the culmination of which is the Easter season: Perfect love casts out fear.
Butler Bass acknowledges that fear is a biological response and universal experience, but that Jesus’s assurance is also true:
“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you….’ When he had said this, he breathed on them…”
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
The door opens toward love—the love of God, the love of neighbor.
I can’t explain it. All I know is that it is right. And I feel it. When I’m scared, I breathe. My breath. Sacred breath. Spirit breath. The in, out, in, out, in, out of life. My heart slows and opens, making room for the other, giving space to love. In, out, in, out. Breathe in peace. Breathe out love.
Peace, love. Peace, love.
Fear abates.
Perfect love casts out fear.
I think of the first words of scripture, how “in the beginning” there was nothing but chaos. Then, God breathed. Chaos was transformed by that breath into a world of beauty and sustenance.
Easter began in confusion and terror behind a locked door. Now, it comes to a quiet conclusion in the breathing … the promise and possibility of new creation. Peace, love.
Perhaps that’s what is meant by resurrection. Being raised from the deadened weight of fear to love.
Reference:
Adapted from Diana Butler Bass, “On Fear and Love,” The Cottage, substack, May 24, 2025. Used with permission. Diana Butler Bass is the author of the award-winning new book, A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditation on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance.
Image credit and inspiration: Pao Dayag, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like a seedling rising out of the earth, we unfold into the brightness of day, knowing that God is a source of protection and life.
Story from Our Community:
I appreciate how these mediations invite me to engage Scripture with new eyes. This week’s study of Psalm 137 has opened up for and in me a new, expansive view of this psalm in particular and the book of Psalms in general. What strikes me most is the bold act of defiance the lamenters take against their captors. Not only do they refuse to sing, but they hang their instruments from trees—such a courageous, artistic, symbolic act of absolute and awesome defiance! Would I be that brave? I can only hope so.
—Brigitte G