April 16, 2023

Easter 2

Epiphany, Winnipeg

John 20:19-31

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

A few times a week I go to a gym close to my home. I’m not trying to be a hero or anything, or chase after my youth or become something I’m not. But there’s a part of me that wants to preserve this body as well as I can and to push back some of those things that just make themselves at home in a body that’s getting older. I suppose that when I’m honest, though, I have to confess that there’s something going on inside me, this little voice telling me lies and saying, “Paul, if you just keep this up you’ll keep on going forever.” I know that’s not true, but I also know that there’s this little bit of insecurity that really doesn’t want to admit that I’m not only mortal but also subject to decay. Like all of us are.

But I get reminders. Sometimes reminders come from my doctor who says, “Well, looks like you’ve got to start thinking about this or maybe you should take that. Or I get reminders from my body when I step out of bed in the morning and say, “Oh my, what was that?” Wrinkles and aches and inconveniences are appearing along the way. The older any of us get, starting at day one, the more our bodies bear marks of our age, signs of growth or signs of, well, wearing out.

We carry scars too. I have a fine collection of barbed wire fence and tree stump and bike crash and floor hockey and minor surgery scars, and I’m sure most of you have your own collection as well. More signs that we’re human, and mortal. They’re also often signs of how resilient we can be and how we can bounce back from injury or illness sometimes. Yet even when we bounce back or recover or at least survive we bear these marks of our mortality. Of what it looks like to be human; skin and bones and all.

We also carry those other scars that no one can see. You know what they are, those things that we carry in our emotional lives, in our spirit; these marks deep inside from the hurts we’ve experienced in our relationships or our work or school or play. Or we don’t have the scars yet, and we’re still carrying around wounds that have not healed; these things we carry inside that remind us how human we are and how weak we can be no matter how hard we try to be strong.

Jesus comes to his disciples who are hiding in a room. Just over a week ago Jesus was crucified, and only a few days after that Jesus’ good friend Mary Magdalene ran to where the disciples were, and she was out of breath, and she preached the first sermon and maybe the only one necessary: “I have seen the Lord.”

But the disciples don’t just believe that because someone says it. They’re still wounded inside because you don’t just get over the death of a friend in a week and move on. Or they’re wounded by the ways they turned away from that friend when he needed them the most. They’re not scarred yet – it takes time for those wounds to heal. And they’re plain old afraid that someone out there might just inflict the same wounds on them that were inflicted on Jesus just a week before.

But Jesus comes into that room, says “Peace be with you,” and then…he shows them his scars. “See my hands? See my side?” He comes back – Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! – in human flesh, risen from the dead but still bearing the wounds and the scars of being human. And when the disciples see Jesus and those signs of his they rejoice.

Then they run off and find their friend Thomas, who wasn’t there when Jesus appeared. So they preach to him, maybe the only sermon necessary: “We have seen the Lord!”, just like Mary told them all a week ago. And Thomas says, “I’ll believe it when I see his scars and touch his wounds.” He just wants to see what they’ve seen and be able to say what they’re saying, but you don’t just believe that because someone says it, do you?

So a week later, when God’s timing is right, Jesus comes to them all and says to Thomas, “See my hands? See my scars? Touch my wounds?” And then Thomas joins Mary and the other disciples and says, “My Lord and my God.” We don’t hear whether Thomas ever did reach out and touch Jesus. But the risen and wounded Jesus showed Thomas his wounds, and when Thomas saw his Lord wounded and scarred and alive again he said, “My Lord and my God.”

The wonder of this faith that we share is that God becomes flesh. God, the word, becomes flesh that depends on his mother for sustenance in all those months before being born and in those first years of life. God, the word, becomes a flesh-and-blood human who has to learn from their parents, and who absorbs a religious tradition, and learns a trade. God, the word, becomes flesh who likes to go to wedding parties and who makes sure there’s enough wine, who asks a woman at a well to give him a drink of water because it’s just so hot out there in that noonday sun. Jesus, the word become flesh, used his spit and mud, such earthy things, to heal someone’s blindness, and one day his heart will break with worry for his friends who will soon struggle and flee in fear. God, the word, becomes the kind of flesh that dies when it just can’t breathe anymore, just like any of the rest of us.

In our liturgy of baptism we quote Paul from Romans and we talk about dying with Christ, and being buried with Christ, in baptism. And we go on to say that in our baptism we are raised with Christ to new life. But we still bear all those signs of being human. Anyone, baptized or not, knows what it’s like to live and to carry those signs. We carry scars; each of us does. We walk with wounds; each of us does.

We know the story as the church too. Risen to new life and called the Body of Christ, and the risen Body of Christ has wounds and scars.

We know the story as a nation and a community that bears wounds and scars that we have inflicted on each other, especially on those we think of as marginalized and living on the edges.

Of course there’s good stuff too. A friend meets a friend for lunch and they taste good foods and laughs and important stories and that’s all just so flesh-and-blood. We get ten dollar a day daycare and maybe that helps heal a wound or two or offer someone a chance to thrive a little more in their flesh and blook life. We go bonkers over a sports team and even that is such a human thing that happens to our skin and bones and everything inside.

This story of disciples and Jesus and a closed room…It's a story some of us have heard forever and some of us for the first time, about Jesus showing up and saying “Peace. See my hands? Touch my side? Here’s my breath. Now go and bring healing to a wounded and scarred world, just like I was sent to do.” And we never need to be ashamed of our wounds or scars and signs of being human because Jesus bears them too, because Jesus was born to live and die and live in the flesh among us. We never need to be perfect or to hide from God what’s broken in us, because the risen Jesus is marked by being human; marked by having once been broken.

My best guess is that none of us have seen, actually seen with our eyes, Jesus walking around. But we’re here today in the real and living Body of Christ, singing and praying and speaking and listening together, or gazing at flowers and butterflies, or thinking about lunch or wondering whether we wore the right shoes today. Really happy and healthy or really not feeling well or some combination of all of that. Proud of who we are or maybe ashamed or unsure of who we are. But risen and alive. Bathed in real water. Tasting real food and drink.

We’re surrounded by the Body of Christ right here, and we’re gifted and called and we’re imperfect and broken and filled with the Spirit. We support and care for one another, ordinary everyday one another, the Body of Christ, and we’re sent into the world, where we meet Christ in flesh-and blood neighbours on the street or at the job or in the classroom.

The risen Jesus finds us, wherever we are, wonders and wounds and all, and we say together “ We’ve seen the Lord!” And we gasp the words, “My Lord and my God.” And we say again, “Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed.”

AMEN.

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April 9, 2023