Reading: John 20:19-31
Theme: Piercings -- love's wounds ever heal?
Among the variety of resurrection stories in the Gospels, this one focuses on how the risen Jesus is known by his wounds.
Piercings.
That’s how Jesus –
the risen Jesus, is known to his disciples.
It’s how he shows himself to them, and how they recognize him – how they
know he is still with them.
I think we need to
imagine this. When Jesus appears and has
to convince his disciples that it’s really him, when those who see him then try
to tell Thomas, and when Thomas says what it will take to convince him that it
really is Jesus raised from the dead and still with them, there is no mention
at all of Jesus’ height or weight, his hair colour or style, the colour of his
eyes, that little mole maybe on his neck, the way he might bend his head
towards you when he speaks to you to show that he’s really listening, or the
little finger maybe of his left hand that was broken as a child when he tried
to stop a bully from picking on a smaller boy and that ever since then was kind
of bent and out of line with the others.
Nor is there any
mention of anything like an aura around him, or a halo, or that his clothes are
dazzling white. Nothing about a strange
tingling feeling of power in his presence, or a sense that great miracles are
just waiting to break out any minute he walks into the room.
None of that is part
of this picture. None of those things
are part of this story of his rising, and his continued presence.
What the disciples
see, what Jesus takes the time to show them, and what Thomas needs to see for
himself are the piercings – the wounds that Jesus suffered at the hands of the
enemies, when he confronted and stood in there against the power of evil and
injustice, when for love of others and in his own loving way he let himself be
pierced, wounded, and even put to death, for love of all the world.
He suffers the
wounds in the course of his life. And it
turns out when he is raised, that the wounds remain as the single most
significant identifying feature of who he is, and how he is known.
It seems he who
healed others could not, or would not heal himself. It seems that even though, and when God
raises him from the dead – breathes life anew into his body, God does not
bother to heal the wounds, or to close up the piercings.
Is that perhaps
because this actually is the way of God, and the way God is known? To not only take on, but literally take in
the sorrows of the other? To be weakened,
to be pierced and wounded by the other’s brokenness as a state of being? To be run through, impaled on the pain of the
world, and to let one’s own blood flow for love, and for the life of others?
Father Richard Rohr,
a Franciscan of our time, commented recently that weakness is not a trait we
like to be associated with.
We
are in a new ballpark here, [he says].
Let’s admit that we admire strength and importance. We admire self-sufficiency, autonomy, the
self-made person, the person with the answers to solve and to fix the problems
and make them go away. That surely the
American [maybe more generally, the Western] way.
But
the Bible – the Gospels and the apostle Paul especially, describe no less than
God as having weakness, and choosing to be weak. In fact, Paul says, “God’s weakness of
greater than human strength.” And how
can this be? How can God be weak?
This
weakness of God, as Paul calls it, is not something we admire or want to
imitate. We like control; God, it seems, loves vulnerability. Yet how many Christian prayers begin with
some form of “Almighty God”? If we are
truly immersed in the mystery of God as it has been revealed to us, we must
equally say “All-Vulnerable God,” too!
There’s
a story I’ve told here before at different times from up in Bruce County of a
good old Scottish Presbyterian man who was admitted to hospital for
surgery. He was glad for the surgery,
but upset that the hospital where he would be was a Catholic institution. The last thing he needed, he said, while he
was dealing with surgery and recovery from it, was all the Catholic crucifixes
and statues of Mary that there would be all around the place. He said he wanted to be able to pray to
almighty God in his own good Presbyterian way, without all that other stuff
around.
So
he asked that the crucifix be removed from whatever room he would be placed in
after the surgery. It wasn’t,
though. Which meant that when after his
surgery when he woke up to begin dealing with the pain of recovery, the first
thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a statue of the crucified Jesus
hanging on the wall directly at the foot of his bed. And, as he said later that day to astonished
visitors, there was no sight more welcome, more encouraging and more healing
for him than an image of the wounded hands of God reaching out to him to gather
him in and hold him close.
The
truth of that experience and the tension we feel around it in our lives is
experienced in all kinds of ways and all kinds of levels – both small and
seemingly insignificant, and large and world-shaping.
One
small, but telling incident in my first marriage is the day the throw rug in
the front hall of our house got muddy.
The rug – a kind of lightly-coloured, long runner through the front
hall, was one my wife especially loved, and one day when she came home and in
the front door she was distraught to see that some mud had been tracked upon
it. Trying to be helpful, my immediate
response was that, “Well, I’m sure we can wash it. We can get it clean.” Which only made her angrier – this time at
me. “I know we can, and I would have got
there,” she said, “I guess I just needed to know that you felt bad about it,
too.”
More
critically, the issue comes up these days around Japhia’s illness and the times
she struggles to get through a day. It
must make such a difference, if I’m able to be there in the moment with her –
really just present to what is going on, just sharing and feeling the sorrow
and the fear sometimes of what she is going through. Or am I there always at a little remove, at a
little distance – in the same room, but only as problem-solver, as fixer, as
analyser, as organizer and director of what needs to be done. All good and necessary things, in their time
and place. But what a difference it
makes – both to her and to me, when I am able just to be with her in the pain
and the struggle.
On
a bigger scale Japhia talks still of the different American presidential
responses to 9-11. In the days
immediately following the attack on the Towers, as America and the world
struggled to absorb the impact of the event, both George Bush – sitting
president, and Bill Clinto – former president, visited Ground Zero to be with
the people there. We all know George
Bush’s response – how defiantly and imperiously he stood his ground, put on the
strong face of American resolve, and declared that America would surely seek
revenge, would fix the problem, and all the world would have to decide if they
were with him or against him. Bill
Clinton, on the other hand, won Japhia’s heart forever, as he stood in the same
scene of devastation, put all thoughts of past and future out of his mind, and
for that moment simply stood and embraced and wept with the people there –
taking into his own heart and mind and body, the pain that was inflicted on
them.
And
we can only wonder how things might have been different – how things might
still be different, if sitting and not just former world leaders, were really
able to do this – take the time and make the space for it, and then act from
that holy centre?
But
I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
You
know how hard it is to just sit with someone and with their pain or
sorrow. We so easily flee from the present
to the past – searching out reasons for the pain, needing to find fault and
assign blame. We also so quickly run
away to the future – devising solutions and fixes, se we won’t have to face
what’s so hard to face in the present moment.
But
you also know the holiness of sitting with someone – a friend, a parent, a
partner, who is ill and weak, who is in pain, who is dying, ands simply sharing
and taking into yourself what they feel, and what they fear. And doing no more – and no less than that, at
least for the moment. You do this so
often, and so lovingly.
In
your own experience, and out of love for others around you, you know the
sacrament of shared pain and weakness.
In your own life, you live that image of God that is stronger than any
human strength – the image of the pierced and wounded Jesus, the image of the
One who stands with and for others against the pain and injustice of this life,
and lets himself be wounded and broken by it.
And
we can only wonder, if we and others were able to live out this image, to live
in this way of God more openly and more consistently, what would it mean for
all the world? What would it mean for
the world’s understanding of God? What
would it mean for the world’s life and healing?
