Second Sunday of Easter
John 20:19-31
April 15, 2007

He Showed Them His Scars

As an undergraduate I spent many hours translating the Greek bard Homer – most of it cramming Monday and Wednesday nights for a class that met on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8:00 a.m. sharp. I had to have a lot of material prepared because I was the only student in that course. (I was also the only Classics major in the college.)

Every Tuesday and Thursday Dr. Jolly (Yes, that really was his name) would come in and survey the classroom, which was full of empty desks, save one. He would then open his copy of Homer, and peer over the top of his reading glasses to take the roll.

"Copeland?" he would inquire tentatively.

"Present," Dr. Jolly.

"Excellent! Let us begin."

Dr. Jolly was a tad eccentric.

There is an episode near the end of The Odyssey, when Odysseus finally returns home after years of wandering. But, of course, this being Greek epic poetry, he doesn’t just come home to his wife and live happily ever after. He comes disguised as an old man, whom nobody recognizes. That night, just before bed, the aged nurse of Odysseus, Eurycleia, bathes him. She thinks she is merely bathing an old stranger who is visiting for the night. But while bathing him, she recognizes a scar on Odysseus’ leg that he got when he was a little boy. She does not recognize him until she sees his scar. (Book XIX)

Here we are on the Sunday after Easter – what is known in some churches as "Low Sunday" because attendance is lower than last week, and so are our spirits. Last Sunday we pulled out all the stops celebrating the triumph of God over death, injustice, oppression, and all the evils that seek to frustrate God’s sovereign will. It was a grand day, a glorious day, the day of Christ’s resurrection.

Thomas shows up a little later. John doesn’t say why he was gone for the first Easter appearance. Perhaps he was out looking for a job, seeing how the disciple business had not panned out. Thomas seems to have been that kind of person: practical, down-to-earth, sensible. Life – and especially the last week of his life with Jesus – has made him that way. His friends tell him what they had seen and heard, but Thomas has had enough of raised and shattered expectations. "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hands in his side, I will not believe" (20:25)

A week later the Risen Christ again surprises his disciples by showing up in the midst of them. This time Thomas is there, and Jesus obliges, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side," says the Risen Christ, "Do not doubt but believe" (20:29).

I’ve studied this text many times, but it was William Willimon* who helped me to see that John is making a connection here, between belief in the Risen Christ and the scars of the crucified Christ. I’ve been so captivated by the character of Thomas, who by his doubting qualifies as the patron saint of post-modernity, that I failed to appreciate Thomas’ brilliant insight.

The Christ of Easter bears the scars of Good Friday. It’s by his scars that we know it’s really the Lord. Easter, the great triumph of God, the stunning victory over death and defeat, does not erase the scars. Without the scars, there would be no Easter.

I know someone who was told, when she became a Christian, "If you are 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 faith, do you think? Is her faith not real?

She was abused as a child. Her Christian faith has helped her to face that darkness and to claim her worth as a child of God. Her faith has brought her much joy, yes, but she still bears the scars. She has that in common with her risen Lord.

When Thomas says, "I won’t believe that it’s Jesus unless I can poke my fingers into the nail-prints in his hands," maybe he isn’t just being obstinate. Maybe he’s saying, "I won’t believe that it’s Jesus unless I can touch his wounds, because the Jesus I know was wounded."

A ghostly Jesus sprung from the grave, hovering above the heartache of the world, might just as well still be dead, you see. The Jesus Thomas knows embraced the pain, touched the care and sorrow, lived where we lived, died as we must die. The Jesus Thomas knows has scars.

Early on in the Christian family history, there a arose a heresy called Docetism. The Docetists said that Christ, the Son of God, did not really suffer on the cross, did not really live on the earth as you and I must live. He just seemed to be like us. (The Greek verb for "appear" or "seem" is doceo.) Jesus, said the Docetists, just appeared to be human.

No! the church said. Jesus was God, but he was also fully human. The divinely Risen Christ bore his human scars. Only a wounded God can save. I Peter goes so far as to say, "by his wounds you have been healed." (I Peter 2:24).

You could even say that it’s our scars that make us human – the ones on the outside and the ones on the inside. I have a scar in the middle of my forehead, which grows less prominent as my hairline recedes and my forehead gains territory. It was put there when I was six or so by my twin sister’s front teeth when we collided head-on. Strangely enough, Brenda had a scar on her forehead, too. She got it when she fell off our grandparent’s porch while pushing me and my younger sister on the porch swing. My scar still shows. What doesn’t show is the scar inside left by Brenda’s death.

Almost every time I walk into a hospital room, I think of Brenda. The scar inside of me links me to the Risen Christ, to the people who, in this life, bear their own scars, and to the company of the saints in light, from whom we are separated merely by space and time. The scars still hurt, but they also heal.

There are people who will tell you that Easter erases the scars. Because Christ is raised from the dead, everything broken is fixed, every injustice is set right, every hurt is healed. That’s not the gospel. The Risen Christ bears the nail prints in his hands. That’s how his disciples know that this mysterious person who walks through locked doors is none other than Jesus, their Lord and their God.

They touch his scars. Thomas demands to do the same. The Christian faith does not deny the pain, the reality of the wound, the hurt that leaves a scar. Our faith tells us to go on, in the name of Christ, for he is risen with his scars.

She was assaulted, in her own backyard, at ten in the morning. It was a terrible thing. Through a good counselor and a loving husband family, she made her way back. One day she called her pastor and said that, as part of her therapy, her counselor wanted her to tell someone, someone other than a family member or pastor, what had happened to her.

"Who do you want to tell?" her pastor asked.

"I want to tell the story to Joe Smith."

Joe Smith was a sometimes recovering, often not, alcoholic. In the four years he had been in that church he had held at least that many jobs.

"I would have thought you’d want to tell another woman," her pastor said. "Why Joe Smith?"

"Because," she said, "Joe knows what it’s like to go to hell and live to tell about it."

I sometimes think the only way any of us gets healed is through wounded healers. Maybe the healing Spirit of the Risen Christ works best through our scars. One thing is for sure. A Docetic Jesus, a deity who has no scars, never descended into hell. But Jesus did. He has the scars to prove it.

Only recently have Presbyterians begun to recover the ancient practice of anointing with oil in connection with baptism. Oil is a powerful Biblical symbol – of setting apart for Christian vocation, of ordaining to the royal priesthood of believers, and, of course, of healing. You could say that one reason for anointing with oil is to give symbolic recognition to the fact that life can hurt – especially life in service to the Risen Christ.

You’ve got your scars – some visible, some not. If, like Thomas, you came here this morning doubting that Jesus is alive -- and who among us is not like Thomas? -- let the Risen Christ show you his scars. The One who has called you in your baptism, your Savior, the Risen One, will show you his scars "that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you might have life in his name" (John 20:31).