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He Showed Them His Scars John 20:19-31 Second Sunday of Easter

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He Showed Them His Scars John 20:19-31 Second Sunday of Easter 1 He Showed Them His Scars John 20:19-31 Second Sunday of Easter, (April 12) 2015 Kyle Childress “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you,’...he showed them his hands and his side.” In The Odyssey (Book XIX), there is that episode, near the end of the tale, when Odysseus finally returns home after years of wandering. But he is disguised as an old man; nobody recognizes him at home, even his own wife. That night, just before bed, the aged nurse of Odysseus, Eurycleia, bathes his feet. She thinks she is merely bathing the feet of an old stranger who visits for the night. But while bathing him, Eurycleia recognizes a scar on Odysseus’ leg, the same scar she remembers from his childhood. She did not recognize him until she saw his scar. Well, we’re one week after Easter Day, one week after that great day of the triumph of God, Easter, that vast setting right of all that death made wrong. Death? Evil? Injustice? Easter says that God's good purposes would not be defeated, that, in the resurrection of Jesus, God triumphed. In today’s gospel, the Risen Christ slips through the closed doors and appears before his fearful and despondent disciples. But they don’t know him. He spoke to them, as he had spoken so often before, saying “Peace.” But they still don’t know him. Then, John says, “He showed them his hands and his side” (John 20:20). He showed them his scars and then, only then, they saw, they rejoiced. 2 2 Thomas shows up a little later. He wasn’t with the other disciples for the appearance of the Resurrected Lord – he must have been out of town. The other disciples tell him of the Risen Christ, but Thomas says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). A week later, the Risen Christ again surprises the disciples. Thomas is there and Jesus obliges, “Put your finger here,” says the Risen Christ, “Do not doubt but believe.” They recognize him by his scars. Somehow here, some connection is being made between belief in the Risen Christ and the scars of Christ. The Risen Christ has scars. Being raised from the dead did not erase his scars. The Christ of Easter bears the scars made on Good Friday. Jesus’ disciples like Thomas recognized him as risen only by touching his scars. Easter, the stunning triumph of God, the great victory over death and defeat, does not erase the scars. How many times have we talked with someone who has become a Christian and was told, “If you are a Christian, a real Christian, you will always feel joy and peace in your heart?” But sometimes that person feels great sadness, even after becoming a Christian. And they feel guilty, thinking they are not a good Christian. Is something wrong with her? Is her faith not adequate? Her Christian faith has brought her much joy, yes, but still she bears the scars from old hurts, old grief, old pain. So did the Risen Christ. The Risen Christ had just moved from death to life, had come forth from the tomb triumphant. In his exalted form, the disciples did not recognize him. It was 3 only when he showed them his scars that they knew him. We don’t want to be too hard on Thomas. When he says, “I won’t believe that it’s Jesus unless I can poke my fingers into the nail-prints in his hands,” Thomas isn’t being simply obstinate. Thomas may be saying, “I won’t believe that it’s Jesus, unless I touch his scars because Jesus has wounds.” They knew him, I think, because the Jesus whom they loved did not hover above the heartache of the world; he embraced the pain, touched the care and the sorrow, lived where we lived, died as we must die. Early in the history of the church, there was a heresy named Docetism. I’ve talked about Docetism before, which is a form of Gnosticism, but it said that Christ, the Son of God, did not really suffer on the cross, did not really live as we must live on this earth. He only appeared (Greek: doceo - appear, seem) to suffer; only appeared to be human. No! the church said. He was God, but he was fully human. The divinely Risen Christ bore human scars. Only a wounded God can save. I Peter goes so far as to say (I Pet. 2:24), “by his wounds you have been healed,” quoting the prophet Isaiah (53:5). To be human is to have scar tissue inside and out. You have scars, human as you are. I have a scar which I earned at about age seven when, playing tag with some friends at church, I banged into a metal rostrum and gashed my forehead. My wound was sewn together and healed. The bleeding quickly stopped. But the scar is still there and still you can see it. It’s there as a tangible reminder of what happens when you run in church. As I grow older, it seems that the scar is a little more evident – perhaps it is getting lower or perhaps my hairline is getting higher. 4 4 Maybe, as we grow older, our scars begin to show! A friend in Atlanta told me he has a friend who spent much of his life in an orphanage. His mother took him there as a little boy, let him out of the car under a big cedar tree, told him she would return that afternoon, but didn’t. The man is now middle aged. One day my friend was to meet him for lunch and was late. When he arrived, only about fifteen minutes late, he found his friend in a state of high agitation, pacing about, perspiring heavily, visibly upset. It seemed an overreaction to my friends fifteen minutes of tardiness. Later, he said, “I just can’t help it. I know why I get so bent out of shape when a friend is late. My mother kept me waiting under that tree at the orphanage all afternoon. And she never, ever returned. I just can’t stand for someone I love to be late.” He was now all grown up, on his own, functioning quite well, yes. But he still had scars. There are people who think that Easter has erased all of that. They think that, just because Jesus was raised from the dead on Easter, the cross is forgotten. No. The Risen Christ bore nail-prints in his hands. That’s how they knew that the mysterious one who stood before them was none other than Jesus. Thomas touched his scars. The Christian faith does not deny the pain, the reality of the wound, the existence of the scars. Our faith enables us to go on, in the name of Christ, even with our wounds – but still there are scars. The resurrection transforms our wounds 5 but does not erase them. But this is important – because of the resurrection, no longer must they keep us in bondage. The Risen Christ was known by his wounds. One of the things that often happens as a new pastor comes to a church is that a string of people will come to him or her to tell about some past wound they have suffered. Why do they tell this? Just to wallow again in self-pity for some wrong with which they have been afflicted? No. I think they tell these stories so that the new pastor will know them. “You will know me now,” they seem to say, even as Thomas knew the Risen Christ as the obedient Jesus, “by my scars.” We are known by our scars. In another place, a long time ago, I knew a woman who was assaulted, in her own backyard, at ten in the morning. It was a terrible thing. Through a good counselor and a loving husband and family, she made her way back. One day she sat down with a man in our community named Simeon, Sim for short. She said that, as part of her therapy, her therapist wanted her to tell someone, someone other than a family member or a pastor, what had happened to her, wanted for her to articulate for someone else, her tragedy. To whom should she tell her story? Who should she ask for help? “I want to tell the story to Sim,” she said. Sim? He was a recovering alcoholic, and a former Maytag repairman who 6 6 had lost his job and lost his family because of his drinking. He was homeless and living with us as part of his recovery. Ann, who was on the faculty at Emory, said, “I would have thought that you might have wanted to tell another woman. Why do you want to tell Sim?” “Because,” she said, “Sim knows what it’s like to go to hell and live to tell about it.” Curious, sometimes there are wounds which heal. A good question to ask yourself is: Do my wounds heal and lead to new life or continue to fester and lead to death? By the Risen Christ our wounds can be healed, as well as become instruments of healing for others. Strange, somebody whom the world regards as a failure bears wounds which may lead to another’s wholeness.
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