After Jesus’ resurrection he shows back up to see his friends and at first they do not believe it is him. Which, you know, fair enough. I think when you watch one of your friends get publicly stripped, beaten, and executed you get to be a little skeptical if he shows back up a few days later claiming to be fine. Jesus, for his part, does not seem to be phased by their skepticism. He was ready for this. The way he convinces them it’s really him? He shows them the marks on his hands where the nails had been, and the place in his side where he was stabbed with a spear.
With his friend Thomas he literally says, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.”
I have known this story since I was a child. It conjures such a visceral image and captures the imagination. I can picture the room in which Jesus appears to them, how they are all standing, how they gather around him, the fear and skepticism and hope and doubt and excitement and wonder.
And in all of this there is one detail that is hiding in plain sight – something with profound theological implications that has escaped me for most of my life.
The marks of his crucifixion are there on the resurrected body of Jesus.
And it’s not at all clear that they are scars yet. We have no idea how healed they are. This is the body with which Jesus enters into heaven. This is his divine form. This is perfection. Jesus – back from the dead, in his glory, walking through walls, in a body that has beaten death – unashamedly bears the marks of his suffering, points to them, and even uses them as a way of saying this is how you know it’s really me.
I think we have the idea that on the other side of grief, maybe on the other side of death, we are fully healed, we forget all that has happened to us, the slate is wiped clean.
In our ideal scenario, the perfect, heavenly body of Jesus should be without blemish, wound, or scar. There should be no memory of the pain he knew in this life. This is the difference between our idealism and God’s reality. So much Christian sentiment amounts to spiritual escapism. This is why so many Christians are obsessed with an imagined end time in which they get to be whisked away from the earth and its suffering – much of which we ourselves created and supported.
But the prayer Jesus taught us is, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus does not instruct us to pray that God will whisk us away from suffering and erase our memories of the ills we have experienced. Jesus tells us to pray for awareness of God’s presence, power, and abundance in the here and now. His hope is that in our awakening to this reality, we will partner with God in the struggle of making earth more heavenly – more just, more equitable, more loving, more honest, more merciful.
I remember on March 13, 2020 when I was preparing to announce that the church would be shutting its doors for several weeks in response to the COVID pandemic. I had visions of our first Sunday back – hopefully just a few weeks later, all gathered closely together, hugging and singing and celebrating. I was engaging in escapism: The hope that our congregation could simply forget COVID and remain unaffected by it.
You can imagine – and those of you who were part of this community at the time remember – that is not how it went. We will never be who we were before March of 2020. Jesus does not want us to pray for that time to be erased from our shared memory, its wounds removed from our shared body. Rather, Jesus wants us to recognize God’s presence with us even in the most painful, scarring places – and to see the beauty and holiness of who we are in the aftermath.
I would say the same to those who yearn for what they might call a simpler time in our national history – a sort of nostalgic political desire to return to some year – whether it be 2015 or 1988 or 1954, or even 1776. Christ’s body is not perfected in some idealized version of this world. There is no going back, and that’s a good thing. The marks we bear are a part of who we are, and God is hallowing that too.
There is something else in all this that cannot go unsaid: The physicality of it all. One of the major fights in ancient Christianity – something that still echoes into present day – was the conflict over how we understand the relationship between the body and the spirit. A lot of early Christians really believed that our bodies were evil, that our job was to disconnect from them as best as possible in this life so that we could rehearse our deaths – because they believed that then we would just be “pure” spirit, so to speak.
This may seem arcane at first, but think to our current times how much we are taught to hate our bodies – to see them as hindrances to so much joy and fulfillment? And to this day, many Christians believe that their bodies are something like an unfortunate encumbrance – something to subdue or endure or even hate. How beneficial is this to the Christians who are trying to convince LGBTQ+ persons to ignore what they know about their bodies? Or those who would take control over women’s bodies: Your body is something to subdue, and God has taught me how to subdue it.
But Jesus returns from the dead in a body: A body with the marks of the life he has lived, the suffering he has endured, the passion he has experienced, and, yes, the joy and pleasure he has known. For Jesus – who is God – the human body is not something to be hated, feared, or shed. He is not embarrassed by his wounds. He says here they are, touch them if you need to. He is whole and complete in his body, not despite it. This should transform our whole idea of perfect bodies – of perfection itself.
Reject any theology, philosophy, or worldview that teaches you to be ashamed of your body, to hide your wounds, to aspire to some version of yourself that does not bear the marks of the life you’ve lived. You will not enter heaven with a blank slate, with a memory, body, or soul wiped clean of all struggle and strife. Those things are as much a part of you as all your accomplishments and successes, all your joys and pleasures.
Your perfection will include every bit of you – your wounds included. Please do not be ashamed of them: God is not. God knows why you have them. They are physical signs of spiritual truths lived out in the day to day of your walk with God in this world. Your body is a sacrament – the grace of God visible to all who know and love you. They remind you that God is faithful to you here and now and has been throughout your life. God’s plan of healing and reconciliation – of redemption and salvation is being worked out within you daily.
