Words Come From the Scars. Memories seem layered inside us with affections like wet newspapers in a car trunk. A

Transcription

1 1 The Church of the Savior Mike Kugler, Lay Preacher April 26, 2009 Acts 3:12-19 Psalm 4 1 John 3:1-7 The Gospel: Luke 24:36-48 Words Come From the Scars Memories seem layered inside us with affections like wet newspapers in a car trunk. A sight, a sound, a smell dislodges them. Tumbling towards our conscious mind, we give them the form of a story. Until awakened some stories seem to sleep in deep caves in our skulls. Awakened perhaps by the sight of a body. Awakened perhaps by the marks of a body well-lived. The body can be the legend of a map to a life well-lived. In the film Jaws Quint the shark hunter, Hooper the marine biologist and Brody the chief, at sea, drink long into one evening and begin to see who can best one another s stories of the scars and how they got them. Thinking he has the topper, Hooper cries out, Mary Ellen Moffit, she broke my heart! Brody asks Quint about a scar on his arm. With an intensity hardly masked by bravado, Quint describes that it was once a tattoo; from his service on the World War II cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis. After their torpedoed ship sank sharks killed most of his fellow crewmen. Once back home he had the tattoo removed. Beneath the scar lies the murmuring memory. Homer (The Odyssey, Bks. 19, 21) tells how the disguised Odysseus arrived home, and washing his feet his nurse Eurycleia sees the scar of a wound given him by a boar when he

2 2 was much younger. The memory of the entire story gushes into the tale, and the hero must grab his beloved servant by the throat to prevent her cry of joy from raising every suitor to his presence. Imagine being Leonard from the film Memento; each survey of his body captures the tattoos reminding him of his wife s assault and death, and the destruction of his memory. Scars remind us of our physical life the risky, negotiated life that leaves its rifling on our skin as we spiral through it. The scar says it all. The setting Luke creates for the final part of this morning s Gospel is odd. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women discover the empty tomb. Reminded of Jesus claims that He would rise after death, they tell the disciples who except for Peter do not believe them. That same day two men, followers of Jesus of one kind or another, meet Jesus outside Jerusalem. They don t recognize Him, even after recounting the crucifixion and hearing the stranger s explanation of how Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew Scriptures. Invited to eat with them, Jesus blesses the bread and they recognize Him, and disappears. The two men immediately leave for Jerusalem to tell the eleven and others. Here Jesus suddenly arrives inside a locked room. He appears while the disciples are retelling the stories they have heard of the empty tomb and the reports of His appearances. They don t know what to make of it. It is no surprise then that we get different accounts from each of the Gospels. Like anyone they were trying to figure out what had happened. Among the cultural options available to them to imagine life after death, the disciples feared ghosts. Jesus appears and frightens them. He must have known the effect His sudden appearance behind a closed door would have. Why would He act that way?

3 3 They were startled, first in terror. They thought He was a ghost. Did they imagine that He had appeared to punish them for their betrayal? Did their guilt and shame slash their hearts? Jesus had promised the Kingdom. It would start with them and the Romans would be expelled. His death meant the end of all those dreams, the hopes and possibilities. Seeing their shock, He invites them to examine His body. His scars would show that in fact it was Jesus. Their terror then becomes joy, and yet the Scripture says in their joy they were still disbelieving and still wondering. Contrast this to John from last week. Thomas gets a bit of criticism for refusing to believe without touching the Savior. In Luke the disciples doubt despite Jesus standing right before them. What is it like to feel exuberant happiness, dancing crazy joy, and yet still not quite believe what is happening in front of you? What you have always dreamed was true, what would be wonderful but in fact too wonderful? Your secret dream that you ve shared with no-one because they would likely respond, Oh get real; that is never going to happen! Jesus proves Himself to them. He does not bring news from the Other Side of a higher state, where the spirit overcomes the flesh. Descending to Hell to chain Satan and release the captives did not peel off offensive, vestigial flesh. The Risen Jesus did not get an improved body repairing His wonky teeth and bad complexion. The three days after His crucifixion were not time at the Methuselah Spa getting a make-over with Moses and Elijah. Our Risen Savior did not receive from the Father some kind of Sacred Purity Plastic Surgery. When He appeared to the disciples He had all the scars of His humiliation and murder.

4 4 Why? I think the renewal of the Creation through Christ s death and resurrection is a renewal of this whole physical cosmos. This world has evolved through enormously complex competitive selection. The Creation, from canyon to cerebral cortex, bears marks of a REALLY long history of struggle and development. Those marks tell of facts of material, dynamic life; including us humans. We crawl, love, run, hide and think in Darwin s tangled bank, and we can t avoid the grooves it leaves in us. This grooved, scared life is God s creation. A redeemed creation will redeem it too. In the renewal of the world in the Kingdom of God, we will be like Jesus after the resurrection. It seems sensible to me that we might also share those scarred bits of this life with that life that is to come. Somehow our life now is to be folded into our life to come. If we are resurrected and the world God promises in the End of Time is one we recognize, it will accommodate us in some way consistent with the world we ve known. This is weird and scary. In some sense what has happened to us, good or ill, wondrous and evil, will be woven into our personality and distinctiveness as people glorified in the Risen Christ. What we will be in Him is the redemption and reconciliation of all that we have been. Jesus scars testify to His humiliation and murder at the hands of unjust religious and political authorities. But He died for them, loved them, redeemed them. His scars testify to us too, sinners who once were also His enemies. Yet He loves and saves us. Jesus scars no longer speak to injustice at the hands of others; the scars of the Risen Jesus testify to His love and friendship with former enemies. The scars cry out of betrayal by His friends, but God in Christ s justice is to mercifully revise those scars to thereafter point to His compassion and forgiveness. The

5 5 scars say it all. All we have been, all that shames, hurts and enrages us, will hereafter speak to our reconciliation in the power, wisdom and love of God in Christ with those who wronged and harmed us. After the disciples examination, Jesus opens the disciples minds, apparently similar to how He interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures to the two companions the day before (v.27). He wished them to understand how the Hebrew Scriptures can be understood to testify to Him and His reconciliation of the world to Himself and the Father. Last week s Gospel of John told us how Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to the disciples. This opening though it is different parallels the gift of the Holy Spirit, opening their minds to the Scriptures and the wisdom of God. The joy of Jesus before them simultaneously released the disciples shame at denying and betraying him. They watched Him beaten, humiliated and murdered. They despaired of their lost Lord and friend. In three days they travel from despair and loss, rocketed into joy and astonishment. The scars say it all: the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, slain now and risen, redeeming all His former enemies, the entire world, to Him and the Father. But we don t see and touch Jesus. Fear provoked their doubt, and it can for us. Doubt that it is really Jesus, doubt that the dead Jewish criminal got up, that He is really with us. Doubt that a story of unmerited forgiveness must have a catch. Surely God wants something from me? Surely He has commanded me to do something to merit His love and mercy? This story of God loving me and you and everyone promiscuously; that can t really be true?

6 6 These are legitimate fears. The story of Joy and Hope is wacky. Certainty is a tempting but finally poor substitute. I ve tried for a long time to disarm certainty in my life, so I can cast myself frail but hopeful into Jesus waiting arms. Our fear like that of the disciples can become joy, though still peppered with doubt. Our joy pours from the same Risen Savior. The Sudden Jesus; the teacher Jesus; the merciful scars that don t murmur vengeance but invite; they all meet here. If He shows up in our lives one day, He might call us to obey. He might place a cross in front of us and ask us to pick it up, to obey Him in that cross bearing that is bearing the burdens of others. Jesus bore a cross for us; we then serve others bearing a cross. We are resurrected to life in Jesus; we become His feet and hands. His scarred hands and feet become us, working in the world as His obedient servants. He brings those whose burdens we bear back from the dead, raises them from graves of their humiliation, shame, suffering, loneliness, pain and grief. He ll ask us and I guess He won t take away our scars, and maybe not our pain either. If our scars are part of the redemption, what should we do about that? Perhaps our scars help us recognize God s voice calling us to His service. When we leave here today, Jesus is sure to appear. Perhaps suddenly. If I don t hide someplace but go out into the world, He ll appear. I ll see Him through the burdens of those I meet. Not just the lonely and pain ridden, but those whose pain is not lovely or inviting. Some pain is more attractive than others. It is much easier for me to imagine loving someone in their shame or loneliness, than loving the bigot who condemns and possibly hates them. But such bigotry has a painful and ugly scar. It is far easier for me to attack him than love him. But the Savior loves the bigot; he loves me, for I was once a bigot, and His enemy. Tolerance to some is

7 7 code for spiritual and moral indifference, for simple-minded love. The test of this is the love and burden bearing of the hater as well as the hated. The disciples hoped in their secret heart, the hope against hope; that Jesus was not dead but alive again and with them. I ll ask that we consider for a moment: What is our secret hope that God is really like? What is our secret hope that God will do in the world? What is our secret hope that God will do for us, and with us? I advise us: Be of good cheer! Have hope! The Risen Savior permits us to dare to hope that those secrets of compassion and power from love to death to resurrection to reconciliation might come true. This is a savior who begs our lives and asks us to take up a cross down the same path He walked. This is a killed, scarred, living and forgiving Savior Who promises us the powerful hope that scars, once telling a terrible story, now tell a very, very different tale. Amen.