Easter 2

Text: John 20: 19-29

Of all the things to find in an Easter story, who would have thought wounds would be so in our face. Isn’t that the stuff of Friday’s crucifixion? What’s it doing so boldly featured in this season of resurrection? Haven’t we moved on?

What’s with the wounds?

Despite their prominence, I never really thought to wonder much about the wounds in this story until a few years ago now when I was struggling with yet another wave of my own wounded-ness that washed over me. In this round it had the effect of generating grave misgivings about myself … a doubting of my essential goodness.  In a conversation with my spiritual director at that time I found myself kind of pathetically asking her “am I ok?” not in the sense of ‘am I going to be alright?’ but ‘am I fundamentally acceptable?’  She absolutely refused to go there with me. “That question is not of God” she told me. “Don’t ever let that question be found on your lips,” she said. All I wanted was her reassurance, and so I kept asking in 3 or 4 different ways, but she saw right through it and each time refused to get into it.  I came to see it as one of those get-thee-behind-me-Satan encounters! What she did offer me was her conviction that in each of us there is God’s infinite goodness that can never, under any circumstances, be taken from us. And it is for each of us, from within ourselves, to come to know and rest in that goodness.

Later that same day I “just happened to” (you see, this is how Grace works!) … I happened to read a chapter in a book I had recently picked up, and the thing that hit me was the risen Christ appears with his wounds … not the wounds somehow erased, gone, as though there was an undoing of what happened; but with the wounds present, for real, even in this new life. It was stunning to me … and deeply hopeful …it made me very very happy! It was massively redemptive to catch this glimpse that even though we have been wounded, new life could be ours … that our wounds don’t finally have the last word, nor do they disqualify us from experiencing a fullness of life.  By the wonder of God’s love at work in us, the same body that knows wounded-ness can, also know a risen-ness!
That day, this came not only as powerful good news -- but with a generous measure of healing as well.
Risen with wounds.

And there’s something else about the wounds in this story. How not only does Jesus not hide them, but in the case of Thomas, he makes them available in such a way, encouraging him to touch into them. What’s that about?

I’ve been blessed with a number of experiences in my own lifetime that offer me some clues.
I was 29 when my Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died a little more than one year later, 61 years old. I had always thought that the worst thing that could happen to me, the thing I would never survive, would be the death of my parents … but this experience of being with my Mum in her dying turned out to be one of the most life-giving experiences of my life. And I would say that had everything to do with the way Mum offered herself to us through this time.
There was her honesty with us about her sorrow … her deep sorrow at leaving us. Instead of steeling herself, and therefore shutting us out in a way, she shared her grief with us …which in turn freed us to share our grief with her. And so she opened the way for a great tenderness between and among us.
It was her desire and ours that she could die at home, and so we were also a big part of her physical care … she allowed us to tend her body. She did not hide her wounded self from us, or her need for care, and so more opportunity for tenderness, for closeness. More breaking open of our hearts. More enlarging of our hearts … more rising of compassion … in Mum and in us.  What I imagined would be the undoing of me was in a sense a coming apart … but in a way that has led to more life, not less.

In making herself available to us, to me, like Mum did, I have been given some enormously valuable gifts … I have some clues for my own journey through dying for how I might be in a way that allows for the possibility of a great grace. And through this experience with Mum, I received the gift of being able to be present with others … to draw near others in their dying, where I might otherwise have been afraid. All of this has come to me by way of Mum making her wounded self so freely available.

Maybe this is something of what we’re seeing in that encounter between Jesus and Thomas, between Jesus and the others … how when he shows up, he‘s bent on exposing the wounds.
When Jesus says to Thomas, “here, put your hand in my hand and in my side,” I’m thinking maybe that’s not just about giving Thomas the proof he thought he needed to be able to affirm with the others that Jesus who was crucified is alive.
We don’t need to touch the wounds of another to know they are alive.
We need to touch the wounds in order to be part of a much greater healing.
We need to touch the wounds in order for our own hearts to be broken open, in order to be given new eyes to see Grace at work, and to feel a compassion rising up in our own bodies that draws us to come alongside, to connect and care.

Maybe that’s what Jesus is offering Thomas … an entry into that mystery … where in touching the wounds something happens that he’s given what he needs to draw near the suffering in the world.
He’s given what he needs to be part of the healing in the world.

There’s this beautiful piece by Mary Luti that says all of this in yet another way. Listen to what she writes …

The truth about human beings is that we're broken. The larger truth is that we heal. The even larger truth is that we heal each other. We have the power, often by the simplest of acts, to help each other heal.

The gospels' most vivid stories are about healing. We call them ‘miracles,' and they are, but not just because the lame walk the blind see, and the deaf hear. It's the way those things happen, so close, so human. Jesus lifts people to their feet, applies salve to their eyes, touches their ears.

The miracle isn't the healing. The miracle is that one person decides not to stand aloof from another person's pain.  The wonder isn't that people are healed, it's that they're loved like that.
The greatest need we have is to be treated with care, treated like human beings, but because that's so rare, when it happens it seems miraculous.

We say, ‘If you have your health, you have everything.' That's not true. Some people aren't healthy, but they have something many healthy people would gladly trade for—people who pray for them, accompany them, don't forget them: a circle of care. In such circles even people facing death may experience a kind of healing, even the dying find the blessing of life.

Jesus didn't heal everyone, but he showed us the new kind of life that can be ours when we don't retreat into one-person worlds. And he gathered the church as a circle of care to give that life away, hand to hand, heart to heart. It's how we heal—by the company we keep.

Prayer
Encircle us with care, merciful Jesus, and make the church -- wounded as we are --a healer, good company for the world. [1]

[1]  Mary Luti, "How We Heal," posted on the United Church of Christ Stillspeaking Daily Devotional, June 24, 2016  http://www.ucc.org/daily_devotional_how_we_heal