April 16, 2023, Wounded Healer, John 20:24-31 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ April 16, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. The outline for the sermon is given below.

The first thing that always strikes me in this story is how Jesus reacts to Thomas’s doubt – a lot to be said about that. But today I want to look at this story from a different angle: Jesus relieves Thomas of his doubts by letting him see and touch his scars, nail prints in his hands and feet, spear wound in his side. But why does Jesus have a resurrection body with scars?

A friend of mine once said to me, “When I get to heaven I’m going to be tall, and I’m going to have big boobs.” She was being mostly facetious, but don’t we always assume that when we are saved and redeemed and resurrected – all that stuff that we say we believe is going to happen to us when Jesus comes back and puts everything to rights – then all of our flaws, and all those things we are ashamed of, and all those parts of ourselves and our history that we would love to leave behind forever, all that stuff will be erased; and we will be perfect in the way we always thought we ought to be perfect. (Like the avatars we make of ourselves on fb, or flawless models air-brushed on the covers of fashion magazines)

But that’s not how it went with Jesus. It’s true that he was somehow changed after his resurrection. Mary Magdalene saw him and thought he was the gardener at first. The disciples, who had spent three years in his company, didn’t recognize him on the beach until they pulled in a miraculous catch of fish. So there was a kind of physical change. But maybe not what you would have expected. He was somehow different. But the worst things that had ever happened to him, the shameful crucifixion, the pain of nails driven through his hands and feet, the deep gash in his side that proved he was dead, the marks of the most traumatic events in his life, they were all there, still present in his resurrection body.

Certainly for Thomas and the other disciples, who knew that Jesus had been crucified, who knew that he had been truly dead and truly buried, the marks of his death were powerful proof that this was really Jesus in the flesh. But there is more to it; the reason goes deeper than providing proof. Jesus could have proved himself in any number of ways – and, in fact, he did prove himself in other ways.

But the other, deeper reason for the scars in Jesus’s hands and feet and side, is that it was those very wounds that made Jesus who he chose to be for our sakes. Isaiah wrote of the Suffering Messiah: “he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.”

And Paul wrote: “being found in human form, Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.”

And Jesus said of himself: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, and I lay down my life for the sheep. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.”

It has become popular to display the Christus Rex instead of the traditional crucifix that shows Jesus in the throes of his agony and death. It’s a joyful symbol, and draws us into worship and resurrection joy. But it isn’t the robes or the crown that proclaim Jesus as the Christ. It is the scars of his wounds, the nail prints, the mark of the spear. It is his wounds that make Jesus the savior of the world.

And for all of us, it is also true. To a very great extent, it is our wounds that have shaped who we are. Most of us are born unmarked, but almost right away life begins to wound us, in big ways and small ways. For me, physically, I bear the marks of all my pregnancies. I have scars from surgeries. And then there are all those invisible wounds, that are even more powerful in shaping us: fears and insecurities from growing up in an alcoholic household, all kinds of painful social experiences of childhood. And so much more – a myriad of wounds, public and private, in a long, imperfect life. But all of my wounds – in the hands of God, and by his grace – have formed me into the person I am, a wife and mother and priest, the child God loves, the daughter he adopted – and all those wounds don’t need to be erased or fixed or covered up like some kind of divine cosmetic surgery. God loves us as we are, and he saves us as we are, along with all the scars that make us ourselves.

One of my favorite things about the Bible is that it isn’t full of perfect heroes and saints (or not the kind of people we think of when we think of saints). The Bible is full of real people, wounded and scarred and imperfect. Peter denied Jesus three times; Paul had a physical affliction that hindered the work he thought he should be doing – not to mention his history of persecuting God’s people. Mary Magdalene bore the scars of seven demons.

We so often hate our wounds; we are ashamed of our imperfections, or we are haunted by them: the traumas of our childhood, the failures of our adulthood, our addictions or losses or inadequacies. But in the hands of the Creator those scars will rise with us in glory, not an ideal “you” but the real “you” fully revealed at last, as the risen Jesus was revealed to his friends and disciples by the scars in his hands and feet and side.

And to the extent that the Church exists as a body, as the Body of Christ: like her Lord, like each of us, it is a body wounded and scarred from her long history of warfare and divisions and failure, cover-ups and bad theology. But we know that she will be redeemed and glorious at the last as Christ’s radiant and beloved Bride, when the voice of a great multitude cries out:

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure – for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”

—

It was his wounds, the nails through his hands and feet, the agony of death by crucifixion – the scars he showed to his friend Thomas – those are what made Jesus the Savior of the World. In the most paradoxical paradox of all history, the cruellest, the most evil things that Satan and the powers and principalities of darkness did, to try to snuff out the Son of God – God used those things to accomplish his work as Messiah and Redeemer.

It’s the way God works, God who is sovereign over all things, both small and great; God who so loved the world that he even gave his Son to be wounded, so that all of us, no matter how broken and scarred, can receive his abundant life. +