SERMON SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR B SCARRED - FOR LIFE!! JOHN 20:19-31 / APRIL 8, 2018

Transcription

1 SERMON SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR B SCARRED - FOR LIFE!! JOHN 20:19-31 / APRIL 8, 2018 Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen. In today s gospel reading, the risen Christ slips through closed doors and appears before his despondent disciples. But they don t know him. He speaks to them, as he had spoken so often before, saying Peace be with you. But they still don t know him. Then, John says, He showed them his hands and his side. He showed them his scars and then, only then, did they recognize him and rejoice. 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. A week later, the risen Christ again surprises the disciples. Thomas is there and Jesus obliges. Put your finger here, Jesus says, do not doubt but believe. Somehow here, a connection is being made between belief in the risen Christ and the scars of Christ. Being raised from the dead did not erase his scars. 1

2 The Christ of Easter bears the scars made on Good Friday. Jesus disciples, like Thomas, recognized him as risen only by paying attention to his scars. Easter, the stunning triumph of God, the great victory over death and sin and evil, does not erase the scars. I read of a young woman who recently became 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? In fact, 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 has 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. Let s not be too hard on Thomas. When he says, I won t believe that it s Jesus unless I put my fingers in the nail wounds in his hands, Thomas isn t being simply obstinate. He and the other disciples knew their Jesus, the one they adored, the one who was now mysteriously present, because he was the one who 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. Somehow they came to an understanding that this person who was mysteriously present to them was real and was Jesus because of his scars. Early on in the Christian faith there was a heresy called docetism. Docetism said that Christ, the son of God, did not really suffer on the cross, did not 2

3 really live as we must live on this earth. He only appeared to suffer (in the original Greek doceo to appear or to seem). He only appeared, only seemed, to be human. Not so! The church said. He was divine, but also fully human. The divinely risen Christ bore human scars. Only a wounded God can save. First peter goes so far as to say, 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, well, more than one scar but I have one scar on the top of my right foot. I was about thirteen when I received it. From time to time my buddy Brian and I would come home from school during the noon hour break and have some lunch either at his place or mine. This one day we came to my place. At that time, my parents and I lived in an apartment in suburban Toronto. My buddy and I got into some sort of silly argument. I went on to the balcony to cool off. As soon as I was on the balcony, my friend rushed over and closed the balcony door, locking it. Being six stories high I had no ready escape route. As my friend stood there laughing and making faces at me, I let my anger get the better of me and I kicked the balcony door which was glass breaking the glass and cutting my foot to the tune of six stitches. That scar is a tangible reminder of that day over half a century ago and reminds me that I do have a temper and need to keep it in check. Scars can be meaningful, helpful reminders of painful yesterdays that, hopefully, are past -- though we live with the consequences all the same. Scars can be of our own making or made by others. Our scars tell part of 3

4 the story of who we are, what has mattered to us, what has happened to us, the risks we ve taken, the mistakes we ve made, gifts we ve given. And as we are reminded in the story before us in John s gospel, this was surely also so with Jesus. Which is why Thomas insisted he needed to see, no more than that, to feel the scars in his hands and put his own hand into Jesus side to be sure it was him. One would think he would have recognized him from the features of his face or the sound of his voice, but, no, for Thomas, Jesus had become something more than that long walk to the cross a week before. Jesus very identity was now defined by the sacrifice he had made on humanity s behalf a sacrifice made most visible in those wounds that by then could have only begun to heal. Now it seems in recent years that Thomas reputation has been somewhat redeemed. I m old enough to remember when the descriptor doubting always came before his name... as if anyone could do anything but doubt in the face of such incredible news as was shared with him by the others. These days, it seems, the emphasis is more on his confession of faith which comes right after Jesus appearance among the disciples in that locked upper room. My saviour and my God! is Thomas exclamation as soon as he realizes that he is actually standing in the presence of the crucified and risen one. Still, I wish sometimes that we could go back to the time when we talked more about Thomas doubt, only perhaps in a different way than we once did. For in my experience, doubt is not necessarily a 4

5 terrible thing. To be sure, doubt can be uncomfortable, and depending on the circumstances can be downright terrifying. And yet, for me, it s only when I ve allowed myself to stand still in my own doubt that I have discovered answers and meaning and hope again. In fact, in their book, Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia For All That Is, Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams name doubt in the second chapter as something for which we should give profound thanks. For as they write, There is simply a point in life when reason fails to satisfy awareness of what is clearly unreasonable and clearly real at the same time... like love and self-sacrifice and trust and good. Data does not exist to explain these unexplainable things. Then only the doubt that opens our hearts to what we cannot comprehend, only the doubt that makes us rabidly pursue the truth, only the doubt that moves us beyond complacency, only the doubt that corrects mythologies not worthy of faith can lead us to the purer air of spiritual truth. Then we are ready to move beyond the senses into the mystical, where faith shows us those penetrating truths that eye cannot see. Back to our story from John. The risen Christ, the Christ after Easter, still has scars. There are people who think that Easter has overcome all that. They think that, just because Jesus was raised from the dead on Easter, the cross is set right, overcome, fixed, forgotten. But 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. The Christian faith does not deny the pain, the reality of the wounds, the existence of scars. The risen Christ was known by his wounds. In my experience as a minister, 5

6 I have been blessed to have many, many persons come to me to share with me some past wound they have suffered. Why do they tell me? It s not a matter of needing to wallow in self-pity for some wrong with which they have been afflicted. They tell me, I believe, so that I will know them. You will know me now, they seem to say, even as Thomas knew the risen Christ by his scars. A woman I knew had been assaulted and brutally beaten by a man she had trusted and allowed into her home. The incident happened a week before she came to see me, but I could still see the evidence: swollen lips, missing teeth, a black eye, bruising and scrapes. She wanted to tell me about the matter and to have a prayer said. But she also wanted me to know that she had sought the compassionate ear and wise counsel of someone else soon after the attack. I went and told my story to Joe Smith, she said. Joe Smith not his real name of course, but I knew him well he was a sometimes recovering, often not, alcoholic. In the time I had known him, he had held and lost so many jobs I had lost count. He was homeless or couch surfing most of the time. I said to her, I would have thought that you might have wanted to tell another woman. Why in the world did you want to tell Joe Smith? Because, she said, Joe knows what it s like to go to hell and live to tell about it. Curious, sometimes there are wounds that heal. Strange, that somebody whom the world regards as a failure bears wounds that may lead to 6

7 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. This wonderful story in John gives us a powerful insight into understanding faith s peculiar form of knowing. Jesus offers two clues to his identity. He speaks the simple words, Peace be with you, and then asks his doubtful friend to put his doubtful fingers into the wounds that he, Jesus, bears from the nails and swords that destroyed his body only days before. What does this tell us about faith? When God comes, we will recognize God s presence in those moments when peace is offered, in those moments when life s most brutal violence is honestly acknowledged, and when, in the midst of this bracing honesty, we realize that we are not alone, but have, in fact, been always, already found. It is good news indeed. In the words of author Serene Jones, In the different seasons of our life, Jesus appearance is certain to change, and we will not always know him, particularly when hardships have given us reasons to doubt. One moment he may come to us dressed in golden garb, calling us to celebrate joyously the richness of spirit faith promises. The next, however, he may come wearing a beggar s rags, reminding us that the love which saves us is vulnerable and costly, and that the glory which awaits us is humble in texture and well worn in feel. At still other times, he may come to us wrapped in the wool shawl of the wise old grandmother who simply holds us as we weep. Whatever his appearance may be, though, we will know it is he, if inside those golden garbs, street-faded rags, or warm knitted cape, we find not a logically argued response to our 7

8 questioning faith but a surprising proclamation of peace and touching love that is stronger than even violent death itself. In the wonder of these wounds, he finds us. We ve got our scars, some visible, some invisible. The one who has called us here this day, our saviour, the risen one, also has scars to prove his love for us. 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 by believing in him you will have life. Thanks be to God. Amen. Major Sources: He Showed Them His Scars by William H. Willimon in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp Editor: William H. Willimon. Wood Lake Books. Winfield, BC. April June, 1997, Scars and Stories, Doubt and Faith by Janet Hunt in April, Theological Perspective by Serene Jones in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, p.404. Editors: David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Westminster John Knox Press