series had been “to discover in the major events in the last period of Jesus’ life the meanings that are significant for our time in the world’s history. . . . Our commitment is to the living God, made known in the Christ-event; not only in an age long past, but in this nation now.” After summarizing evidences of “growing frustration” throughout the nation, he declared that there was “lack of leadership to foster change and unwillingness on the part of the majority to make the sacrifices necessary to the achievement of justice. It is in this kind of world, he continued, “where the skein of tragedy is woven through the texture of man’s life, that we have to measure the meaning and significance of Jesus’ life, answer the questions about the nature of Ultimate Reality, and make the fundamental choices and commitments regarding our own lives.”
Thomas devoted the central portion of the sermon to a description of the cruel character of Jesus’ final hours and his intense suffering. He stressed the fact that neither the gospel writers nor Jesus himself emphasized the physical suffering. The center of what they remembered and proclaimed was “a precise recollection of his spiritual agony, the sense of being abandoned by God. They did not seek pity for Jesus and made it clear he did not seek it for himself.” He wept because the people whom he came to lead toward a new way of living “in the kingdom’s cause” would not change “from the pursuit of pleasure or material things or nationalistic glory in true repentance to the God of love and grace.” In a long paragraph, Thomas listed the many tragic circumstances of life in the world right then and concluded this recitation. “We weep for all the destructiveness and inability to come to grips with reality that is around us [and] for all the tragic limitations and failures that keep the world from becoming the kingdom of God’s love.”
On Thursday evening of that week—Maundy Thursday, April 4, 1968—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Three days later, the congregation gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday. The service for that day had already been planned to feature Cantata No. 4 by J. S. Bach, “Christ Lay in Death’s Dark Prison,” sung by the church’s choir with organ and orchestra, to take the place of the sermon. Instead of listening to the gospel word proclaimed from the pulpit, the congregation joined the choir in singing stanzas one and seven of the final hymn in the cantata (with the choir singing stanzas two through six). By singing these words, the worshipers became immediate participants in that day’s dialogue on the incarnation.
Christ lay by death enshrouded, from mortal sin to save us;
He is again arisen, Eternal life he gave us.
So now let us joyful be, and magnify him thankfully. Hallelujah!
To celebrate this Holy Feast in reverence united.
The evil leaven works no more. Thy Word its curse has righted.
Christ himself the Feast will be and nourish our souls
That we by faith may gain salvation. Hallelujah!
On Easter Sunday, the final challenge for the Lenten series of sermons was to proclaim the message of new life in a manner convincing enough to counteract the somber character of the five sermons that had explored the many-faceted suffering that Jesus experienced during his final week. The tragedy of Jesus’ death and burial had an epilogue, Thomas declared to his congregation. The disciples emerged from hiding, rejoicing in a mighty faith and new hope, and started a movement that “laid hold of multitudes and . . . affected the transformation of human hearts” around the world. The one explanation that seemed adequate was the one given in Acts 2:24. “God raised him to life again, setting him free from the pangs of death, because it could not be that death should keep him in its grip.” In answer to the idea that the accounts of resurrection were illusion or deliberate deception, he quoted Jesus scholar Joseph Klausner: “It is impossible to suppose that there was any conscious deception: the nineteen hundred years’ faith of millions is not founded on deception.”
The question that Thomas faced was how the people of our time were to understand the resurrection. Part of his answer was to call attention to the inconsistencies and problems in the gospel record itself, which enabled him to state that in the disciples’ time and in ours “the resurrection faith must be distinguished from the gospel stories about it.” After noting variant ideas in biblical writings, including those of Paul and concluding with John, he concluded: “Jesus had come back to trusting hearts as the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, the Counselor, guiding them into the full truth.” The idea that “Jesus’ resurrection was a physical re-animation played only a very brief role in the serious thinking of the ancient church.” Instead, it was an idea declared in the First Epistle of John, describing “this return as an inward, spiritual force that proved to be indominable.”
Referring to the conclusion reached by one of “the great modern historians of the church,” Thomas declared that there “can be no doubt that Christians through the ages have been honest in reporting an experience of ‘being with a Presence’ associated with the historical Jesus.” He called attention to Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of a person whose life and ministry were sustained by this faith. “What we declare in this terrible time,” Thomas continued, “is that the emancipating event has occurred; that Christ has infinite significance both for the individual destiny and for the future of the human race.” In answer to many who during the past ten days had been asking if life can have any meaning, Thomas concluded the sermon with a paragraph, delivered with the full force of his personal and rhetorical power.
“That is our faith; that is our testimony this Easter day. We are not alone in an uncaring universe—alone with our sins and follies, our loss and grief and pain, our guns with telescopic sights, our unbridled hates and unreasonable judgments, our racism and nuclear power, our divided church with its traditional forms and reluctance to serve in the world. We are in the hands of God and God is the one ‘who raised Christ Jesus from the dead.’”
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