Have you ever been at a meeting when you wondered who was in control? Or perhaps you have been part of an organization where it seemed the leaders were out of touch. And you asked: “Who is in control?”
During the dark days surrounding the crucifixion people must have asked that question. But on Easter a surprising event took place. God reasserted control in this world.
But even then some wondered who was in control. The word had not gotten out. The crucifixion was still real. In that atmosphere we encounter Thomas. Doubting Thomas.
“Doubting Thomas” – a phrase in our everyday life.
Negative.
Had to put Jesus to the test.
Let’s put a positive light on Thomas.
Is it not possible that Thomas could not accept some celestial phantom, totally different from the man of
Rather than seeing this as an example of the super skeptic, does it not tell us something positive about Thomas? Thomas needed to know that this Risen Lord speaking of peace and empowering forgiveness was also the same Jesus who had been lifted up on the cross.
Thomas’s answerering confession, “My Lord and my God,” was possible only because he was convinced that the Christ of Calvary and the Christ of Easter were the same. He is our Lord and God only because he still carried the evidence of the darkest marks of our disgrace. In a way that is perhaps what the late Pope John Paul II was trying to communicate as he also suffered in his last years but still carried on his ministry. The work of Christ connects to both the cross and the empty tomb.
Theologians sometimes use the terms:
Theology of the Cross
Theology of Glory
The challenge for them and for us is to keep a creative balance between the two. There is a continual tendency to forget one or the other:
Theology of the Cross
Grim determination.
Suffering.
Action.
Duty
Social Activists
Theology of Glory
Happiness
Cheap Grace
No sacrifice
TV Evangelists
In Jesus Christ we see both:
Man of Sorrows
King of Glory
Obedient Servant
Exalted Sovereign
We have no need for divinity untouched by our human agony. This is not the kind of God we wish to be “in control.”
Jennet’s speech in Christopher Fry’s play “The Lady’s Not for Burning”:
…Then if time and space
have any purpose, I shall belong to it
If not, if all is a pretty fiction
To distract the cherubim and seraphim
Who so continually do cry,
The least I can do
Is to fill the curled shell of the world
With human deep-sea sound, and hold it to
The ear of God, until he has appetite
To taste our salt sorrow on his lips.
That is how Thomas felt. He was tired of pretty fictions. So are we. The good news for him and for us is that in Jesus Christ God has tasted our salt sorrow on his lips. The one who did the bitter tasting is our Savior and Sovereign. The one who shouted out “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me,” is now the one whom we count as the Lord of Life.
Who is in control? On this day we proclaim that God is in control. The God of sorrow and the God of celebration. The God of Good Friday and the God of Easter Sunday. The God who has come among us and shared our common lot. The God whose glory fills the skies.
Alleluia!
He is risen indeed!
