[Our guest preacher was Mr. Christopher Dwyer. Christopher is a chorister, co-chair of our Outreach Group, and a seminarian.]
April 8, 2018: I speak to you in the name of God: Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Hey, Thomas? I get it, brother. You want to believe – you really do. According to the Gospel of John, just a week ago the Beloved Disciple and Peter went running off to the tomb because Jesus’s body was missing, and then Mary comes barging in to the Upper Room, saying “No, he’s not missing.” Jesus had risen, just like he said. Wasn’t that wonderful? Everyone was so happy. And then, that night, you popped out to do something or other and you come back and the others are like “Dude. He was here.” And you’re like “Well he ain’t here now, is he?”
I get it. No matter how much you want this all to be true, there’s just something not right here. Because these descriptions you’ve been getting about him are weird. I mean, he’s never been the plainest talker, but now he’s just next-level cryptic. And no matter where you guys went off to in your ministry, he’s always been with you, or gone off to pray or something, but he told you where he’d be, and now he kinda blinks in and out of rooms and says stuff like “Peace Be With You,” as if you all haven’t been living together for three straight years. 10 days ago you were eating together, breaking bread right in this room, and now he can’t even wait long enough for you to get back before blinking away?
I completely get it, dude. It doesn’t seem like him at all, does it? It’s like some kind of ghost or spirit or something, but it’s not Jesus. Well, at least not the Jesus you know. So, if you’re really going to believe he’s risen from the dead, you’re going to need something tangible.
We’ll get back to Thomas in a bit, but I want to tell you that when I say I get where Thomas is coming from, I’m not just trying to redeem a good man with an unfortunate nickname. I really get it. These descriptions are weird, the blinking in and out of places is disconcerting, and mostly I really want the Jesus who was giving his Sermon on the Mount, or feeding all those people, or twisting the Pharisees’ minds in knots. I want himback. I loved that Jesus. I was comfortable with that Jesus. Where did he go?
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
A friend of mine on Facebook last week posted a poem by John Updike called “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” and the first stanza unflinchingly declares the necessity of a corporeal resurrection to our faith. It says:
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
And this is where Thomas is coming from. Thomas needs to know that this is a real person, or he can’t say that this is a real resurrection. No one can. I mean, the last time he showed up, the others didn’t touch him – not even Mary got to touch him.
But here’s the crucial element in this story: Thomas could easily have said “Unless I give Jesus a big ol’ hug next time he shows up here, I will not believe.” That would have done fine, right? Thomas would have doubted until he got something corporeal, Jesus would still have had his mild admonishment about believing without seeing at the end, and maybe instead of remembering him as “Doubting Thomas,” we’d be calling him “Cuddly Thomas.”
But that’s not how this all went down. Thomas didn’t want a hug. Thomas demanded to touch Jesus’s scars.
Scars, particularly big, dramatic scars like Jesus’s, are emotionally fraught. We show them to each other with trepidation, knowing that as soon as they’re out in the open, we’ll have to tell the story of how they got there once again. Sometimes we wear extra clothing to hide them. Sometimes we make up other stories so we don’t have to rehash the uncomfortably personal or just plain wearisome truth. Here’s one man’s story. He says:
The first time I took off my shirt in public and had someone ask me about my chest scars, I was on a group trip in Israel with my partner. It was a warm Spring night, and six of us were on a beach at a kibbutz in the Galilee … I was the only transgender person present.
“If it’s not too personal, can I ask what your scars are from?” a guy on our trip politely asked. He didn’t know that I’d transitioned yet.
“Double lung transplant,” I deadpanned.[2]
When Jesus shows Thomas his scars, he is offering a level of intimacy we haven’t seen from him before, in any of the Gospels. If you have scars – and right now I’m talking about physical scars, you know what I mean. Think about the first time you willingly let someone see your scar. Were you afraid that they’d wince, or look away, or suddenly have to go, or interrogate you on how you got it? And if you’ve ever been on the other end of that most personal transaction, think of the heavy mix of fear and hope in the other person’s eyes as they waited for your reaction.
Folks, when we proclaim that God became incarnate and walked among us because God loves us, this is the kind of love we mean. God invites us into an intimate, vulnerable loving relationship, where we show God who we truly are: broken, scarred, holy, and made in God’s own broken, scarred, and holy image.
And, with that same level of trust, Jesus invites us to put our hand in the incision where they took the cancer out, and asks us to rejoice with him for the five years he’s been cancer-free.
Jesus invites us to touch the scar from his emergency C-section, and we weep with him for his lost child.
Jesus invites us to run our hand along the stump where he lost his leg to diabetes, and to run our fingers around his tracheostomy, as with a forever-changed voice, he tells us how he just couldn’t stop.
Jesus rolls up his sleeves and runs our fingers along the crisscross lattice of scars on the inside of his arm, and tells us about the darkest time in his life, when he just needed to feel something outside his own head. And then he tells us about the therapist and the doctor who brought him back from the brink.
Jesus places our fingers in the six entrance wounds police bullets put in his back while he was in his grandma’s yard.
Christ is risen indeed.
Father Shay Kearns, a transgender man who is a priest in the Old Catholic Church – a Northern European branch of Catholicism which broke off with Rome in the 1870s – talks about hearing this passage in seminary as a transformative moment. Father Shay – whose entire story is fascinating, by the way, and I invite you to look him up – began his transition during his second year of seminary. During this time he says he felt like a walking, talking Trans 101 lesson. This is how he describes what that means:
Inevitably someone is going to ask “so have you had the surgery? What do your scars look like?” Maybe they’ll ask it in a whisper or maybe they’ll ask it loudly, either way it feels like an invasion. … And in those moments I always struggle with how to answer. I try to juggle my intense discomfort with giving someone the benefit of the doubt. I push aside my own feelings in order to educate someone.[3]
And it’s in Jesus’s admonishment to Thomas at the end that Fr. Shay found validation for these feelings. “Why do you need to see my scars to know who I am? Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.”[4]
That’s what we’re seeing when we see Jesus’s scars. We’re seeing who he really is. Because Thomas’s instincts are right – The Jesus standing in front of him at that moment is different than the Jesus he knew two weeks earlier. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has become who he’s truly been all along, and he has the scars to prove it. Jesus shows Thomas and shows us the fully human, fully divine Christ he’s always been, and those scars are what brought him there.
You get it now, don’t you, Thomas? Jesus lifted up his tunic, shuffled around his mantle, smiled, and gently guided your hand to the scar on his side. And in that moment, you knew. You touched his scar, looked at his kind face, and told everyone who he truly is: “My Lord and My God.”
Alleluia.
For the audio from our 10:30am service, subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast, or click here:
[1] John Updike, “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” https://genius.com/John-updike-seven-stanzas-at-easter-annotated, accessed April 6, 2018.
[2] Aron Moe Macarow, “Embracing My Scars as a Transgender Man,” POPSUGAR, April 2nd, 2018. https://www.popsugar.com/news/Aron-Moe-Macarow-LGBTQ-Pride-Essay-43587739, accessed April 6th, 2018
[3] Shannon Kearns, “Your Body is Good: A Resurrection Sermon,” Posted April 4, 2018 http://www.shannontlkearns.com/your-body-is-good-a-resurrection-sermon/, accessed April 6th, 2018
[4] Queer Theology, “Doubting Thomas – John 29:19-31,” Podcast. https://www.queertheology.com/john-20-19-31-doubting-thomas/
