Opening Thoughts
The Gospel readings through the Season of Easter in one way and another focus on hands – the hands of the risen Jesus, and of those who know him – on what his hands and ours are like and what they do in the world. And that’s our theme for the Season of Easter: Resurrection hands.
Look at your hands right now. What are they like? How would you describe them? How would others describe them? How do you use them? And how do others experience your hands?
In today’s reading and worship, what we see of the hands of
the risen Jesus, is that they are scarred and wounded by the way he has chosen
to give himself, and let himself die for the sake of others. The hands of new life – of life greater than
death – are wounded.
Reading: John 20:19-31
On the evening of the first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. When the others told him they had seen the Lord, he declared, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand in his side, I will not believe it.”
A week later the disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Meditation
It’s funny what you remember about people who mean a lot to you. Like my mom, and the little groove in one of her front teeth, worn into the tooth by years of using it to pry open bobby pins. Or my dad, and the image of so many scrapes, cuts and left-over scabs on his balding head, remnants of run-ins between the top of his head and the bottom or a door-frame or some sharp of a bus he was working on that day at his job at the Greyhound/Motor Coach factory.
When I think of myself as a father, I think of my 35-year-old leather jacket still all in good shape, except for the left shoulder and upper arm where the finish is worn off and the leather is decidedly worn and dull. And as a grandfather, I think of the indelible black marks on the top of one end of the light brown coffee table in our living room.
It’s funny what you remember when you think of relationships that mean something to you.
All those years and hours my mom spent prying open bobby pins every Saturday night to set my sisters’ hair in pin curls so they’d look nice for church the next morning.
The wounds my father endured – both on the top of his head and in so many other ways, to hold a job at Motor Coach and make the most of it (which by the end of 40 years was a lot), even though early on there were times he’d probably gladly have been almost anywhere else. But it was how he supported his family, kept a good roof over our heads, and gave us kids the good start in life he wanted us to have.
The leather jacket? It’s the one I wore to church on chilly Sundays when Aaron was just a few years old, and he asked every time to be carried home, which I did because it was nice to be so close.
And the black marks? They help me remember little Japhia over to visit, kneeling at the living room coffee table, making a picture for her Jammie with a black Sharpie and a single piece of paper in front of her on the table.
Things like these are signs of loving connectedness. The marks of healing and redeeming relationships. The wounds and scars of caring and being cared for. The sacraments of being real.
In The Velveteen Rabbit, a classic tale set in a child’s nursery, Margery Williams writes about becoming Real, and of being engaged with others in the transaction of Real life – both human and holy.
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the other toys. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old, wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is REAL” asked the Rabbit [a new, velveteen addition to the nursery] one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit.”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“I suppose you are Real?” said the Rabbit. And then wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great any years ago; but once you
become Real you can’t become unreal again.
It lasts for always.”
It’s interesting that when the disciples meet the risen Jesus, what gets focused on, as the signs of him really being Jesus, more than anything else about him, are the wounds of the nails in his hands, and of the spear in his side. These are the signs of his love for them; the scars of his giving himself to them and even letting himself die for their well-being.
And although it’s mostly at the end that this becomes clear, what they see now is that being willingly wounded and weakened for them is what he’s been doing and what he’s been about all along, what’s really connected them, and what they have been needing of him.
Like that time when the woman with the 12-year flow of blood was healed just by touching his garment, and Jesus said he felt power go out of him. It cost him something of himself each time he gave someone else what they needed. It made him less and diminished him in a very real way, but his willingness to do it also made both him and the other he became less for, more Real together.
Which is why he stopped, wanted to meet the woman, see her face to face, and let her know this was about her being loved by him and by God for who she was, cared for as she was, and held up by hands willing to suffer the wound and the cost of undying love for her.
All the things the disciples thought were important and that they thought they loved Jesus for – the healings, the feedings, the teachings, the blessings, all the gifts he was able to give them, all the stuff – all these at the end fall away. Now they see all along the real point has been his willingness to let himself be wounded, to suffer whatever loss was needed, and at the end even to die, for them. And their need of him to do that.
It’s not the stuff—it’s the willingness to be wounded and to suffer loss to himself that makes Jesus a Real Messiah. That makes God a Real God. And that makes us feel like Real people as well – who know ourselves to be loved, valued, worthwhile, cared for and not alone.
We all need someone to give themselves up for us in some way, and let themselves suffer a wound for the sake of our well-being, and even to die for us, for us to feel like real people.
We all also need to be able to suffer wounds and loss for the sake of others – even die for them in some way, for us to become Real people.
It’s the way of Real life to live with wounded hands and a pierced side. It’s the way of the Christ and of all who walk that way with him – in life, in death, and in life beyond death.
Can you remember some of the people who have suffered loss for you? Who are Real to you, because of the ways they let themselves be wounded for you – whether it be a tooth with a groove worn into it, a head scraped and bleeding, a jacket worn thin and faded on one side, a nice table indelibly marked, a hand permanently wounded, a side pierced through?
And … can you see who needs you to suffer some loss,
and be wounded and weakened for them? Someone
for whom you can become Real? A Real Person?
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