I find it interesting that I still come across things in scripture that I have missed, which have been hiding in plain sight. This morning is just such a morning for me where we read, “Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’” The obvious takeaways from this story are that Jesus was really there and that he is not a ghost and that in his resurrected state he has flesh and bones. All well and good but we kind of covered that bit of it on Easter Day. The thing that I find so interesting in it and the thing that I have been missing in all the times I have read it comes in the bit about the hands and feet. Why is Jesus asking them to look at them because those are the places where he was pierced by the nails when he was crucified. For as we see other places in scripture his hands and feet still carry the scars of his crucifixion. And this is the part that I have somehow overlooked and failed to grasp its significance. For after all if Jesus has been raised from the dead and now has a glorified body why does he still carry the scars from his time on earth – can’t he make those things go away? I mean he is the Son of God, he cured other people of deformity, can’t he do the work that most any decent plastic surgeon could do? And the answer to that is certainly yes. Jesus could make it all go away, but he didn’t and so the question remains as to why. Why does Jesus comeback bearing the scars of his crucifixion?
One answer is that he wanted to be recognizable. If you remember from last week the Disciple Thomas said, "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." Thomas laid down a criterion for belief that could only be met with visible scars. But I am not sure if this is a full explanation - that it was done for the benefit of the disciples. Jesus seems to suggest after Thomas has announced that Jesus is Lord and God that such shows of scars and wounds should not have to be necessary. He states, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." No I think the only explanation that makes the most sense is that the scars and the marks of the nails have somehow become part of whom Jesus is - that some of the suffering on this earth stayed with him. Which means, if look at Jesus as the pioneer and perfector of our faith, the one who went before us, this means that our wounds and injuries are also part of what makes us who we are. We will one day have resurrected bodies, but some of the slings and arrows that we have suffered while on this earth will still be present in those new bodies. Which I guess may sound disappointing; I for one had hoped to have more important hair in the next life. But even following that logic we still have not quite gotten to the point of why this happens. Why do injuries and wounds follow us? Well, you are in luck because I have a theory. And just as a caveat some of what I am about to say is a bit of my personal theory, but I don’t think it is heretical so we should be safe. If I am wrong and it is heretical if you could wait to burn me until the service is finished I would appreciate it. So let’s start with Jesus and the nature of the wounds that we see today.
The Prophet Isaiah says, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” Part of what this is telling us in terms of who Jesus is and what he did is that his bruises and his wounds are the means by which we have been healed. The bruises may have been done in malice, but what came out of them was our salvation. So therefore, when the disciples are seeing the wounds of Christ they are not only seeing the brutality with which Christ suffered, but they are also seeing the means by which they, and by extension we, have been made right with God. And so now on to my theory. Christ’s wounds remain because the ultimate result of them is something wonderful and beautiful. In this life we have all suffered – some of us more than others, but we have all experienced times of nastiness and vitriol, pain and hardship. Times where we have been despised and hated and unfortunately for some of us even had physical suffering. As best I know none of us have actually been crucified, but we have had experiences in our lives that left us wounded. And the question is what have we done with our woundedness? Have we used it to make things better? And if we have it seems that these things may remain throughout eternity, because they have been redeemed by God.
And I know that may sound like a strange proposition, but let me tell a story and see if it makes it a little more clear. The first parish in which I served I worked for a priest named John. A little over a year into my job John’s wife went to the hospital with what they thought was a pinched nerve. Three days later she was dead from septicemia. It was horrible and tragic and John obviously went into a deep and profound period of mourning. Four months after the death of John’s wife, just after Christmas a young man in our parish shot and killed himself. The thing I remember so vividly about this experience was that after John had met with the family, he told me that if he had met with them four months ago he would have had nothing to say to this family who had just lost their son. He would not have been able to understand the level or nature of their grief, but because of his own tragedy he was able to bring someone else through tragedy. His woundedness helped to heal someone else. Carl Jung developed the phrase “wounded healer” which was picked up by Henri Nouwen in his book of the same name. In that book Nouwen essentially argues that woundedness can serve as a source of strength and healing. Which is what Jesus did and it is what we are called to do as well. By our wounds we can heal others.
Many of us in life will experience things that we don’t like. All indications are that Jesus did not really want to be crucified, but the question is how do we make those scars part of who we are in a way that is glorifying to God. Sometimes you will hear Christians say after some tragedy that it was God’s will. I am not one that tends to subscribe to such theories of fatalism, which posit that everything that happens is because God orchestrated it to be that way. But what I do subscribe to is the belief that all things can be used to the glory of God. When Christ was crucified it was the single worst act in human history. The one person who ever existed who was without sin was crucified as if he committed a wrong. But through this horrible and wrong act we have been saved.
Christ’s wounds are a reminder of the fact that God can redeem anything. Which means that our scars and our woundedness can be redeemed by God so that they can be used to further God’s kingdom. And it appears that those wounds, if so wonderfully and beautifully redeemed, will be with us in the next life. Because they are no longer signs of the victory of sin and evil but are instead the signs of God’s victory. Yes we will all suffer in this life, we will all have things befall us that are not of our making that will wound and damage us, but God can redeem these things for his glory so that we may be his both now and forevermore.