26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” [John 20:26-28, NRSV]
The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio, c. 1602
The first witnesses who encountered the Risen Christ did not expect the Resurrection and did not know what to make of it. So their shocked responses leave behind gaps and silences in the primitive Gospel accounts. This realization is compelling for me, as I find their testimonies all the more convincing. If they were writing a propaganda piece, they would have straightened things out to dress up a lie as truth. Truth after all, surprises, and truth-details do not always fit our preconceived ideas.
How can anybody blame them for their fear and confusion? They had seen Jesus grievously tortured, humiliated, and then put to death by the cruelest form of execution at the time – a Roman crucifixion. They saw his atrocious death on the cross. In shock and despair, his death had spelt for them a definitive end to his story, his mission, his cause. They saw his crucified dead body lowered from the cross and placed in a nearby tomb. They saw a big stone rolled against the tomb entrance that permanently sealed the end of any possible cosmic power at work in him. Establishing the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven? That’s impossible now; the show had abruptly ended. There was no room left to entertain any magical idea that there would be anything else. Shattered dreams and devastating death were all that’s left. None in their “right mind” could be wondering, “When will Jesus rise again to continue this kingdom-building work?” Badly wounded psychologically in such a state of loss-suffering, their human psyche was a biting void. In total despair, they could not possibly factor into their consciousness that a good God would not possibly allow the mission of Christ to end in a meaningless death.
- The principal message in the story of Adam was one of disobedience to God, a sickness that gradually became pervasive, so much so that the entire Judeo-Christian Bible may be seen as a depository of a persistent refrain featuring a God preoccupied with calling people to “return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12-15). Beginning with Israel, and moving on to the Gentile world, God initiated one covenant after another, for the salvation of a sinning-humanity who broke those covenants one after another. Finally, Christ came to reverse this human disobedience with utter obedience, even unto death. In order to show humanity a different way to live, away from sin, Christ lived a life of discipline, in contrast to the sin-soaked “freedom” and “value-system” of the world. For that, “the world would hate you” (John 15:18-25). Thus for Christ, suffering was inevitable, even to the point of being gotten rid of. His spirit of obedience that propelled his willing acceptance of excruciating suffering in the hands of sinful men, is most precious to God. And Jesus, who loved “to the end” (John 13:1) is met with a resounding approval and affirmation from God who raised him from the dead.
And so, as it is, the whole of the New Testament attests without reservation that Jesus was raised from the dead by God who affirmed all that Jesus did and taught and stood for as being very good. God saw to it that Jesus’ obedience, faithfulness, suffering and death were not in vain.
- Thus the Word of God reveals definitively, that Jesus whom the Jews crucified and was buried, God raised him up on the third day according to the Scriptures, and made him Lord and Christ (see Acts 2:24; 2:32; 2:36; 3:15; 3:26; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 13:30; 13:33-34; 17:31; 1 Cor 6:14; 15:4; Eph 1:20; 2 Cor 4:14; Rom 4:24; 6:4; 8:11; 8:34; Gal 1:1; 1 Pet 1:21; 1 Thes 1:10; Heb 13:20).
In his resurrected body, wounds are retained as glorious testimony of his suffering and God’s mercy.
- If we miss the fact that the New Testament consistently and repeatedly states that Jesus did not rise on his own, but was raised by God from the dead, we miss a profound and fundamental revelation of the Christian truth on the relationship of the Father and the Son. And that would be a “glaring” miss, both for theology and for spirituality. On this point, we suggest that you re-visit one of our earlier posts – 30. Easter: From Mountain to Mountain, dated 16-04-2011.
In shock, however, when the early disciples first met the Risen Christ, they thought he was a ghost. But then he had a body, though it seemed like a body of a different kind. His Risen Body appeared in some other dimension that they could not quite comprehend, much less to explain. He could walk through locked doors, and yet they could touch him. They saw him eat a piece of fish, so he was no ghost. Eventually they came to realize that Jesus was raised from the dead by the power of God’s love. The Fourth Evangelist wrote that God loved the world so much He gave His Only Son, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (John 3:16). Love is the only power stronger than death. Death is the coup de grâce of sin, the masterstroke of evil; life is the gift and promise of God, the embodiment of love.
Then the early disciples came to see too that the Resurrection of Jesus was not just about Jesus. His experience of a new dimension of life is offered to every human being. Disciples who suffer in imitation of Christ are brought ever closer to God. In Christ, we are saved. In Christ, we are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). In Christ, we are called to be ambassadors for peace and agents of reconciliation between God and humanity and between human beings themselves (2 Cor 5:20).
Salvation is therefore a new creation, a restoration to the original order and beauty of God’s creation. Divine love is offered to the whole creation which as St Paul puts it, groans in a great act of giving birth:
- 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [Rom 8:19-21, NRSV]
Jesus Christ is not the only one born from the dead to new life. In Pauline language, he is the first born of many brothers and sisters. Christianity, according to Edward Schillebeeckx OP, is first and foremost a story and a practice. It is an experience of a new dimension of life, the experience of light born out of darkness, of a life that is bigger than death. It will carry wounds, but wounds ultimately of grace and mercy. In this life, we do not have all the answers to questions of evil and suffering. But we do know that there is no evil, even of the most horrendous kind like the death of Jesus, from which God cannot and does not draw good. There is no wound, however horrendous, that cannot become a fountain of mercy. On the cross at Calvary, Jesus gathered all the sorrow, all the wounds, all the tears and all the wickedness of the world and lifted them up to God in the name of love. In raising Jesus from the dead, God turns all of that into something else. Death is now replaced by new life and that’s what we announce to the world on this Easter morning.
This is all the more urgent as Pope Francis says the world is on the brink of a nuclear war like the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Evil and darkness persist at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), doing their best to block calls for cease fire in the Israeli genocidal war of attrition in Gaza and negotiation for peaceful settlement in the Ukraine conflict. At the heart of darkness, we need words that offer us the Easter eye of hope and new life. We turn as usual to Pope Francis for our reliable guide:
- Christ’s Resurrection is not an event of the past. It contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the Resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. Often it seems that God doesn’t exist. All around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference, cruelty, but it’s also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later it produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through stubbornly and invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew. It rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to re-appear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed hopeless. Such is the power of Christ’s Resurrection, which everywhere calls forth seeds of a new world, even if they are cut back they grow again. For the Resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of this history. Jesus did not rise in vain (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 276, 278).
The conviction that Christ has risen is the power that moved the first disciples to rise up from fear. Then the descent of the Holy Spirit on the First Pentecost energized them to bolt from the gate to evangelise the world.
May the Risen Christ fill you all with hope and energy this Easter season. Happy Easter.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, March 2024. All rights reserved.
To comment, email jeffangiegoh@gmail.com.