After The Cross - Week Two
May 10, 2026
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Week 2: Shrug
Context:
Many shrug at the cross — it’s too good to
be true, a fairytale, a metaphor, a bizarre
historical footnote. It is understandable that the cross frustrates and stretches us. It is a puzzle, a mystery, a step into wonder, an event that cuts across the grain of history.
For some the shrug will lead to rejecting the faith, dismissing the cross, and for others it will be the question that draws them deeper, that makes them linger there.
Really confronting the cross means confronting the strange reality of it. If the cross hasn’t ever made us shrug, scratch our heads, or sigh in frustration are we really looking at the cross? Or just an empty logo...? Discuss!
Introducing the readings:
This week we rejoin Cleopas and his friend as they strike up a conversation with the mysterious stranger. They can’t believe he doesn’t know all that has happened (Has he been living under a rock? No but he has just rolled one aside...). The two disciples are weary, spent, sad — and now this stranger is inviting them to relive the last week! All they can do is shrug. They had hoped for more, they have heard rumours, but it was all too good to be true. Once more, shrugging is a reasonable response to the cross. The cross invites a critical sincere faith, like that of Thomas in John 20. Doubting the cross — being frustrated by it — is not a barrier to faith, it’s part of faith. Key themes in these readings are ambivalence, scepticism and doubt.
Read: Luke 24: 18-26 and John 20: 24-31
Response:
Returning to Emmaus we uncover the shrug
— the feeling of disappointment. “We had
hoped that he would be the Messiah” (verse 21). This forlorn feeling is echoed in John 20: 24-31 with the shrug of Thomas’s shoulders.
Yet Thomas’s scepticism is transformed by
the invitation from Jesus to touch his
wounds.
Q: Discuss Thomas’s change of perspective when he grasps the revelation that God is the God who carries our scars. Do you identify with Thomas, do you find his
story relatable?
Q: Reflect: How do the Flinch, the Shrug and the Touch all describe our human spiritual journey? In our lives could touching Jesus be interpreted as an act of compassion toward those who suffer? When did you last reach to touch a suffering friend or even a stranger?
This week we look to another theologian to help us get insight into the cross. Donald Baillie was a Scottish Theologian whose book, ‘God was in Christ’ encourages us to look beyond the factual to the place of encounter. For Baillie, the cross isn't just a historical event we "flinch" at; it is a place where our own will and God’s grace meet in a "paradoxical" embrace.
Baillie was very concerned with how we talk about "God in Christ." The Flinch and the Shrug are what happens when we see Jesus as only a man. The Faith (the burning heart) happens when, through the "Touch," we realise — as Thomas did — that this man is also "My Lord and my God.”
Q: Discuss: What is it about touching the wounds of Christ — in prayer and in confronting the suffering of the world — that transforms the cross from a distant far off event in history to becoming a personal encounter with the living God, who understands our own hidden pains and sorrows, and releases us from our guilt? Psalm 16 speaks of being secure in the grace and love of God. How could the touch — reaching out to Christ and others — bring that about?
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