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http://www.chapel.duke.edu/sermons/043095.htm



He Showed Them His Scars



April 30, 1995



Third Sunday of Easter



John 20:19-31



"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 and son. That night, just

before bed, the aged nurse of Odysseus, Eurycleia,

bathes him. She thinks she is merely bathing 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

infancy. She did not recognize him until she saw

his scar.



Well, we're two Sundays after Easter, two Sundays

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 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.



Thomas shows up a little later. He wasn't with the

other disciples for the Easter appearance. 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."



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.



I know someone who has become a Christian. She was

told, "If you are a Christian, a real Christian,

you will always feel joy and peace in your heart."

But she feels great sadness, even after becoming a

Christian. Is something wrong with her? Is her

faith not yet firm? She was abused as a child. Her

Christian faith has brought her much joy, yes, but

still she bears the scars. So did the Risen Christ.



The Risen Christ had just moved from death to life,

had sallied forth from the tomb triumphant. In his

exalted form, the disciples did not recognize him.

It was only when he showed them his scars that they

knew him. Don't be too hard on Thomas. When he

says, "I won't believe that it's Jesus unless I can

poke my fingers into the nailprints in his hands,"

Thomas isn't being simply abstinent.  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 on, there was a heresy named Docetism.

Docetism 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."



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 age five when, playing tag with

my cousins, I banged into our porch and gashed my

forehead. My wound was sewn together and healed.

The bleeding quickly stopped. Eventually I got over

my fear of hospitals. But I still (as my hairline

recedes you will see it) bear the scar, there as a

tangible reminder of the night I could have died,

but didn't. Maybe, as we grow older, our scars

show!



And the Risen Christ, the Christ after Easter,

still has scars.



I have 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.



My friend is now middle aged. One day I was to meet

him for lunch and I was late. When I arrived, only

about fifteen minutes late, I found him in a state

of high agitation, pacing about, perspiring

heavily, visibly upset. It seemed an overreaction

to my fifteen minutes of tardiness.



Later, he said to me. "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 overcome

all of that. They think that, just because Jesus

was raised from the dead on Easter, the cross is

set right, overcome, fixed, forgot. No. The Risen

Christ bore nailprints 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 Risen Christ was known by his wounds. As a new

pastor at a church, I have found that there's

always a string of people who come to me to tell me

about some past wound they have suffered.  Why do

they tell me? Just to wallow again in self-pity for

some wrong with which they have been afflicted? No.

I think they tell me so that I 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 my last church I had 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 called me, telling me that her

counselor, as part of her therapy, 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 Joe Smith," she said.



Joe Smith? He was a sometimes recovering, often

not, alcoholic. In the four years I had been at

that church, Joe had held and lost as many jobs.



"I would have thought that you might have wanted to

tell another woman," I said. "Why do you want to

tell Joe Smith?" I asked.



"Because," she said, "Joe knows what it's like to

go to hell and live to tell about it."



Curious, sometimes there are wounds which heal.

Strange, somebody whom the world regards as a

failure bears wounds which may lead to another's

wholeness. Maybe the only way any of us get healed

is through wounded healers. It's hard to be helped

by someone who hasn't been there, some Docetist

deity who has no scars.



We've got this kid, Freshman, in the Chapel Choir.

I had mentioned something in a sermon about how I

believe that we are "marked" by God for life for

some good thing. The Freshman's mother happened to

be in the congregation that morning. After service

she came up to me, pushing her sheepish freshman

son before her toward me. "This one's marked," she

said. Marked? He grinned.



"Nearly lost him during the first six weeks of his

life. They had him in Duke Hospital putting the

oxygen to him as the little thing hung between life

and death. I prayed to God the whole time. Told God

that, if he lived, I would dedicate him to God.

He's got a scar to this day on his heel where they

fed him those six weeks in the hospital. Right on

his heel. I look upon that scar as God's mark.

When he was a little boy, I'd point to that scar on

his heel and say, 'See that? It's a sign that God's

got plans for you. You've been saved, set apart by

God.' He's got the scar to prove it. He's a gift."



You've got your scars, some visible, some

invisible, some more visible with age. The One who

has called you hear this day, your Savior, the

Risen One also has scars, to prove his love for

you. If you don't know him, like Thomas, if you

aren't sure that you believe, he'll graciously show

you his scars "that you might believe that Jesus is

the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through

believing you may have life in his name" (Jn.

20:31).



He showed them his scars. Amen.