Sermon for April 15, 2012 - The Wounds

The Scripture passage for this sermon is John 20:19-31

Following the execution of Jesus as a criminal, the disciples were scattered.  They were without direction, without hope.  Any sense of meaning that they had established around Jesus had died and was buried in a tomb.  His calls for transformation of individuals, and transformation of the world were gone.  Any belief that God was on the side of Jesus breathed its last, when he cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Their myriad of dreams, dreams of a world remade, of justice for the poor, of the powerful overthrown, were gone.

And so they waited in a room.  Terrified of the world around them.  They feared a wraith that would come quickly.  Should they stay together?  In hiding?  Should they say goodbye, and head off each in their own direction?  Their tails between their legs as they returned to a life they had abandoned?  Would they even be welcome back home?  Where were they to go?  What were they to do?  Those great existential questions cried out deep within their souls.  The only thing they knew was that they were alone.

But everything began to change on that first Easter morning.  Everything began to change for Mary Magdalene, for Peter, for John.  And when Jesus appeared behind closed and locked doors to the rest of the disciples, everything began to change for them too.

But everything had not begun to change for Thomas.  Not yet, anyways.

When the disciples came running and told Thomas what they saw he couldn’t believe it.  He probably thought they were joking, playing some mean prank and waiting for him to go along with it, before before Philip would jump out from under the curtain, yelling “Sucker!”  And everyone would laugh. 

But this story isn’t just about Thomas not believing.  It goes far beyond that.  Thomas is not struggling with unbelief, or a lack of faith.  He is struggling because the very idea of the resurrected Christ is incomprehensible.  Resurrection is absurd.  That Christ had risen, for Thomas would have shattered his understanding of the world, of the way the universe worked.  How could God have possibly been on Jesus’ side when Jesus had been crucified?  What about now if he had risen?  What did this say about God?  What did this say about Jesus’ mission?  What would this mean for Thomas’ life?

“Unless I can put my fingers into the nail holes in his hands, and stick my hand into the wound in his side, how can I possibly believe you?  I can’t even understand what that would mean.”  Thomas is wearing the fullness of his humanity in all of its questioning glory.  He cannot let go of his understandings about the world simply on the words of a few of his friends.

And then, it happens.

Again, behind those closed and locked doors, the Risen Christ appears.  He invites Thomas to touch the wounds in his hands and in his side.  No one else has been allowed to touch Christ to this point.  Thomas is the first.  We can imagine the tenderness with which he takes Christ’s hands.  Exploring them with his eyes and his fingers.  Feeling, not only the nail marks, but each and every finger, both thumbs, the front and the backs.   This was a tactile encounter.  Thomas touched the wound in Christ’s side, who knows how deep he put his hand in.  The wounds are still there, they have not scabbed or scarred over, and so I imagine this whole physical exploration would have hurt Christ.  But Thomas proceeds, unabated.

And then he gasps, taking in his breath he drops to his knees.  “My Lord and My God!”  Thomas is the first to recognize God in the Risen Christ.  Everything had not begun to change for Thomas, it had changed entirely in that one moment.  “My Lord and my God!”

For me, Thomas is the first Christian.  Until Thomas is able to touch Christ, there was only an image, only an apparition.  But suddenly all those questions, all those fears that had been running through his head were confronted.  Thomas’ worldview was shattered by the wounds of Christ.

To be a Christian, means to have our worldview shattered by the wounds of Christ.

In the past I have shared with you my own story of when I first realized that was happening to me, of when my own worldview began to be shattered by the wounds of Christ.  It began in a small village called El Mozote in El Salvador, where we were given a tour by the only survivor of a horrific massacre that occurred in the early 1980s.  I was able to see the wounds of Christ in the world around me, and soon I was able to see those same wound within myself.  They popped up in a deeper understanding of the anger which dwelt and still dwells within me.  More recently, I have been able to touch those wounds in my own struggles with sadness, and in the tenderness that still exists just below the surface.  These have all dramatically re-shaped my understanding of and relationship with the world around me, myself, and God.

Where in the world have we touched Christ’s wounds?  Where in the world have we found a God, not of majesty and wealth, but a wounded God, a God of brokenness?  Where in our lives, in our hearts have we felt and experienced that?  Has it been a specific event?  A loss of some kind?  Or perhaps a specific encounter?  Or is it just a feeling that resides within?  A constant companion of sorts?  Perhaps anger, or perhaps sadness, or perhaps just a pervasive sense of loneliness?  We all have the opportunity to touch those wounds regularly.  Though it is often portrayed differently, Christianity, in its best sense, is tremendously open and honest about the tragic realities in the world around us.

Still, it is no wonder Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe!”  Touching Christ’s wounds as I said, can be world shattering.  Everything we may think we know about God, about ourselves, about the world around us, can be shaken to the very core. Jesus is not saying that those who have not seen but believed are better, I think he is saying they are more fortunate.  They do not have to have their world shaken to understand the nature of God’s brokenness in Jesus. This is not an easy experience, it is one we shy away from.

None of us runs head first to explore those shadowy feelings in ourselves, or to helplessly bear witness to the pain that is going on in the world around us.  I think that is why so many of us don’t like going to hospitals, or personal care homes.  I think that is why so many of us don’t like to talk or even think about those painful experiences in our lives, choosing instead to dull them.  I think that is why our fear of encountering the reality of poverty often translates into anger, hatred, and judgment.  Because exploring those wounds, as Thomas explores Christ’s wounds, (and I mean genuinely exploring them, in a tactile sense, probing and prodding, wondering and questioning) can create tremendous upheaval in our lives.  It is scary, it may even hurt.

I’d like to read a few words written by Henri Nouwen that wonderfully describes the opportunity behind this sort of upheaval.  This is from his book, Reaching Out.  “Often it is the dark forest that makes us speak about the open field.  Frequently prison makes us think about freedom, hunger helps us to appreciate food, and war gives us words for peace.  Not seldom are our visions of the future born out of the sufferings of the present and our hope for others out of our own despair.  Only few ‘happy endings’ make us happy, but often someone’s careful and honest articulation of the ambiguities, uncertainties and painful conditions of life gives us new hope.  The paradox is indeed that new life is born out of the pains of the old.

These are the great opportunities of conversion.  These are where we can reach out and touch the wounds of Christ in the world.  These are the chances for our worldview to be shattered, and remade in something new, remade in the image of a God who suffers with us, who cries out for justice, and who embodies love even onto the cross.