Second Sunday of Easter
A sermon by The Rev. Sue Singer
April 18, 2004
John 20: 19-29
"Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side."
If the Risen Christ was applying for a passport or a driver's license, those scars in his hands and side would surely have to be be listed under "distinguishing marks." They seem to be an integral and necessary part of who Christ is, even after he has overcome the powers of death that put them there.
In John's account of Christ's first resurrection meeting with the disciples, the act of Jesus in showing them his scars is the hallmark of his authenticity. Those scars above all are the things by which they will know that it is he. More than by his familiar face, more than by the sound of his voice, more than by his familiar greeting of, "Peace be with you." They will know him by his scars.
The disciples were probably hardly able to hear the dear and familiar greeting, so aware were they that it should have been, "Shame on you." They were probably equally unable to look him in the eyes, this Lord and teacher whom they had abandoned to betrayal and death. But, before their downcast eyes, there were the scars, unmistakably those of crucifixion, livid, gaping holes that remained even in flesh that was now risen and glorified.
Those scars were probably the last things the disciples wanted to see. They were unavoidable reminders of their failure and his agony. They were puzzling relics of death in what could so easily have been the complete triumphalism of resurrection. They were unmistakable signs that once again they were meeting a Messiah who would continue to overturn every single one of their expectations. Because even once they had begun to comprehend the fact that, against all hope or expectation, Christ was risen from the dead, they had to come to terms with the fact that he still bore the marks of the nails and the spear-wound.
In his life Jesus had confounded them at every turn by refusing to be the political leader they had all been expecting. In his death Jesus had taken away any remaining hopes of success on the world's terms. And even in his resurrection Jesus retains the marks of ignominy and pain in the midst of a glory that transforms them, but which never leaves them behind.
The same Jesus who identified himself with the poor, the outcast, the opressed and those who have no helper in his life; , the same Jesus who was numbered with the transgressors in his death; this Jesus is the Risen Christ who still bears in his body the scars that speak of his saving solidarity with human suffering in all its forms. Our Messiah, even when risen and glorified, bears the scars that make him who he is: God with us, with us in all things, with us especially and irrevocably in all the dreadful and destructive and death-dealing things.
So what does it mean for us, to have a Messiah with scars?
It means, above all, that, like the disciples, we have to recognise and say yes to the glory of the Risen Christ as it is, not as we hope it might be. I think that, like the disciples, we find the sight of Jesus' scars raises up an ambiguous reaction in us. There is a part of us that wishes those scars weren't there, the same part that wishes Jesus could have been the successful, triumphant Messiah that the disciples had hoped for, the kind of Messiah we all start off looking for. We don't want to be reminded of what it cost to redeem us, and we don't want to know so conclusively that our God really is the kind of God who saves us by going into and through death, not around it. We'd prefer that resurrection meant "new life" in the sense of "shiny new life, new and perfect life, life without death" rather than "renewed life, redeemed life, resurrection life, life through and beyond death."
That's what the scars of the Risen Christ remind us of, and it's good to face that. Because Christ's scars are part of his glory. They dazzle the mind with the same light that flashes from the cross and shines on Easter morning-they are part of the mystery of death-and-resurrection in its totality. And that is a mystery into which we are called to enter, a glory we are invited to share.
As the old evangelical hymn says, "If you will not bear the cross, you can't wear the crown." That's not because God gives one in payment for the other, but because the cross and the crown are the same thing, the cross is the only real crown there is, because the wounds of crucifixion are inseparable from the glory of the resurrection.
Because this is true, the scars that the risen Christ bears give meaning to our own scars. All of us have them: the gaping holes of loss and incompleteness, the spear-marks of cruelty and suffering (deserved and undeserved), the bruises of chronic despair or loneliness or self-hatred. When we are honest about ouselves, we know we are the walking wounded. In Christ's hands and side we recognise them - our wounds, all of them, borne and redeemed; in his risen body we see our death, all the deaths to which we are subject, overcome in the glory of the resurrection.
If we can see our own wounds in the scars of the Risen Christ, then we can learn to recognise him when he appears to us, in our lives, and in our world. Christ still stands among us, greeting us with peace, showing us his hands and his side, showing us that through him, God really has overcome the power of death. And so the place where we will see and know Christ most fully in ourselves and in the world is in the scar tissue, not in the smooth, unblemished flesh.
Resurrection is not, in fact, well symbolised by the pristine beauty of the earth, by sunshine and baby animals and spring flowers, because these are all natural things, beautiful and whole in themselves. Because resurrection is God's most unnatural act, the act by which all that is ugly and hateful, deadly and fearful, is taken into God's own body and overcome - and the signs of that victory are the holes, the spear-wound, the scar tissue.
And so we can see and know Christ still crucified in the places where we need him most of all:
in the hospital room and the funeral home,
in the broken heart and the clouded mind,
in front of the empty bottle and the loaded gun,
in the imperfections of our political processes and the intractable complexity of our foreign policy,
in the fear of the soldiers driving down the desert highway and in the proud and angry hearts of those who await them in ambush,
in all the places where life and peace and joy and hope are not.
And we can see and know Christ rising from the dead, showing us his hands and feet:
in the family and friends united in grief and love,
in the support group and the therapist's office,
in the twelve step meeting and the education program for prisoners,
in the raised voices of activists and concerned citizens and public officials who will not compromise their integrity,
in the courage of the citizens of Fallujah who today are insisting on negotiating with the United Nations on behalf of their city, at peril to their lives,
in all the places where life and peace and joy and hope are struggling to be raised from the dead.
Christ comes to us all those places, as he came into the locked upper room, beyond all expectation and against all human odds. He comes to us as we reach for faith with the costly gesture of Thomas, touching, probing, taking hold of the scars within the risen flesh, and confessing him as Lord and God. He comes to us as we bring him into all the places which need his healing power to bring them through death to resurrection.
We can see and know Christ when we reveal our scars, when we dare to expose the places in us where God has raised us from the dead, when we say to those around us, "Put your finger here, reach out your hand, see and feel what Jesus has done in me." We can see and know Christ when we try ourselves, be it ever so haltingly, to live as if resurrection is indeed the deepest reality there is, despite all appearances to the contrary. We can see and know Christ when we share in the pain of others, when we identify with the poor and the dispossessed, when we take some action for the sake of raising the world from some of its deadness, when in the smallest way we live the kind of life Jesus lived and die the kind of death he died. Thank God - it is the Risen Christ we find at those times and in those places, revealing the resurrection power of God in and through the scars that are his glory and our hope.
It is hard to imagine, often, how our witness to resurection, which seems so small and insignificant, can have any effect - even on those nearest to us, let alone on the vast national and international stage of war and oppression and injustice. It's easy to lose hope that the wounds of the world will ever stop bleeding, easy to feel that revealing the resurrection contained within our own scars is too small and helpless a gesture.
When I feel like that - and I do, every day, as I read the newspaper - I remember the role that the faith of Christians played in one of the greatest conflicts of our times, in the overcoming of the apartheid regime in South Africa, against all hope and expectation. And I remember a story about Brother Roger Schutz, founder and Prior of the Taize community of reconciliation, who visited South Africa at the height of that regime.
He wrote in his journal about how he encountered the Risen Christ there:
"I thought we should be meeting a few friends, but a whole crowd had gathered for prayer. . . African priests and pastors of all denominations welcomed me on a platform and handed me a microphone. [I spoke some words] but I said to myself that my words were so inadequate. [So instead} I tried to express all that was in my heart with a gesture. ‘I would like to ask your forgiveness, not in the name of the whites - I could not do that - but because you are suffering for the Gospel and you go before us into the Kingdom of God. I would like to pass from one to another of you so that each of you can make the sign of the cross in my palm, the sign of Christ's forgiveness.' This gesture was understood immediately. Everyone made it, even the children. It seemed to take an eternity. And then, spontaneously, they burst into songs of resurrection."
The sign of the cross in our palms, in our lives, in the life of the world. Like the sign of the cross on our foreheads at Baptism. The sign of Christ's forgiveness. The sign of resurrection. The scar that reveals our salvation; the mark of shame that becomes the token of glory; the cross that, in the trust we call faith, is Christ's crown and our crown forever. Amen.