You might notice that I do not refer to him as “Doubting Thomas.”
That’s because it is pretty unfair to stick that label on him and not on the other ten remaining apostles. They ALL doubted. And who can blame them? That’s a completely human reaction to have.
Throughout the centuries there has been a hatchet job done on the whole concept of “doubt.” I have heard church people refer to doubt as “the lack of faith.” If you have doubts, they piously intone, you have “lost your faith.”
Not so.
The opposite of faith is not doubt. Doubt demonstrates that you are engaging with the questions before you, seriously. The opposite of faith is disengagement—in not wrestling with the questions, and their impact on our lives, at all. The opposite of faith is not caring, giving up. The life of faith is an active life—it doesn’t take place between your ears, but under your ribs. Faith is not an intellectual proposition to be proved or disproved based on evidence, but a conversion of heart and spirit toward a life seeking after the holy, the good, and the compassionate.
Instead, what I am drawn to thinking about this year as we hear this gospel is the idea of Jesus’s wounds. Not in a creepy way. But as signs of Christ’s solidarity with us.
Too often, wounds and scars are seen as imperfections, something to hide or be ashamed of. They are sometimes used to identify you—and even sometimes make you simply a collection of your wounds and scars, as if that is all there is to any person.
Have you ever noticed that when the authorities are looking for a missing person, they include information about their noticeable scars? Our scars are like our fingerprints—each unique.
Harrison Ford’s got a famous scar on his chin from a car accident, and he gave Sean Bean a scar on his forehead when filming Patriot Games. Harry Potter has his famous lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead, and Professor Dumbledore claims to have a scar on his knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. The evil prince who usurps the throne in The Lion King is actually named Scar. Our beautiful Earth even bears wounds and scars, many inflicted by human activity. As we celebrated Earth Day this last week, I hope that many of us thought of those wounds, and what we could do, each of us, to bring them to healing and recovery.
I thought of the painting by Caravaggio of Jesus inviting what the artist called an “incredulous” Thomas to actually touch those wounds (see the cover image above). Heck, Jesus doesn’t just invite—he takes Thomas’s wrist and drawn him toward his side. Jesus shows Thomas his scars to help prove it’s really him when Thomas, like the rest of the apostles, has a hard time believing that Jesus has been resurrected from the dead. Jesus’s wounds tell the story of love triumphing over death and evil and cruelty.
Our wounds and our scars also each tell a story. When I look at the scars on my body, I remember how I got each of them. There’s a long straight scar on my left leg where it meets my foot—I got that when I was 18, sitting cross-legged on the floor trying to open a hard plastic package with a new doorknob in it. I broke every rule about knife safety I had been taught and turned the blade toward me as I tried to cut open the clamshell packaging. I didn’t feel so good about it either—or the fact that my dad actually almost passed out when he saw the minimal amount of blood as I asked him to take me to the ER. That scar also memorializes the day I learned my dad was afraid of the sight of blood—one of his wounds I could not see.
Then there are scars that are invisible—internal, emotional scars. The ones we bear from heartbreak, or trauma, or abuse, or neglect—and the ones we frequently overlook in others in our rush to judge them. Those scars also tell a story of survival and resilience. Many of us have some new ones after the last few years.
And these internal scars, once we seek help and healing for them, once we accept that they are part of what makes us who we are but not the totality of who we are, are also an opportunity for us to develop empathy and choose a different path, so that we do not, in turn, inflict new scars like ours on others. Thanks to the love of Jesus in the tender hearts of others who have loved me and ministered to me, those kind of scars in my life I have eventually learned to treasure as precious reminders that I have choice, and agency, to break the cycles of pain and suffering that caused others to wound me and scar me. They remind me that I have survived, and that I am more than just my wounds and my scars. They remind me that there is always hope for healing.
Some people are ashamed of their wounds and scars. Our society puts too much emphasis on the idea of perfection being related to looking like you’ve never experienced the touch of pain or aging or just plain old living. That’s not healthy. But scars can also be noble. They are markers of endurance. We can also look at scars as signs of our survival and healing. They are signs of resilience.
Jesus showed his own scars to his friends after resurrection because our scars are the signs that we all bear of what has shaped us, for good or for ill. We are all known by our scars—and with what we do with them. Do we use them as excuses to hurt others and leave scars of our own as we pass by? Or do we see them as signs that we have persevered and have healed? After Jesus shows his scars as a sign that the cross did not have the last word with him, Jesus commissions his followers—including you and me, even those of us who have to cross our fingers behind our backs at a lot of the claims made in the Creed-- to go out and continue his work. And that includes acknowledging the wounds and scars and suffering around us, and acting in the name of love to ameliorate them.
That’s part of what “salvation” and “redemption” mean—two words that get thrown around in Christian circles without nearly enough examination. Being saved and been redeemed by Jesus is NOT about what happens after death. It is about what happens now: the grace we receive, the healing we receive, and our obligation and joy to participate in giving that to others.
Jesus, whose name means Salvation, is here, right now, showing us his scars rather than chastising any of us for our questions and our doubts. He shows us the power of resurrection is absolutely reconciling and transformational—that’s the whole point. We can’t wipe away our pasts. But we can move beyond our wounds and welcome the healing balm of God’s love to take us from being a wounded victim to a joyful victor. In showing us his wounds, he invites us as his followers to go out and offer healing and reconciliation to those they encounter by proclaiming God’s power in the lives of everyone.
I have often wondered if Jesus didn’t wince a bit when Thomas touched those wounds—another image to which we all can relate. Jesus demonstrates that this—wounds and all—is his body. This is my Body, broken for you….” we intone at the Eucharist, and often without considering the impact of that remembrance, that statement. Jesus opens himself to us, bodily and spiritually around this altar every time we gather here.
We who have known woundedness are called to recognize God’s love in the wounds of Jesus. Top recognize that, and work to heal the wounds we encounter in the world today, since we are commissioned to action as the Body of Christ.
We can still see the wounds of Jesus all around us, as Pope Francis once remarked, on the bodies of those around us.
“How can I find the wounds of Jesus today? I cannot see them as Thomas saw them. I find them in doing works of mercy, in giving to the body — to the body and to the soul, but I stress the body — of your injured brethren, for they are hungry, thirsty, naked, humiliated, slaves, in prison, in hospital. These are the wounds of Jesus in our day.
"We must touch the wounds of Jesus, caress them. We must heal the wounds of Jesus with tenderness. We must literally kiss the wounds of Jesus…What Jesus asks us to do with our works of mercy is what Thomas asked: to enter his wounds.”
What does all of this mean for us, and our own struggles with faith, and our doubts? Thomas was simply trying to understand the meaning of those events of the last three days—remember that this story takes place on the evening of Easter Day and then seven days later. It’s all still fresh.
I wonder if that was indeed why Thomas needed to see those wounds—wounds that shocked and appalled Thomas even as they confirmed it was indeed his beloved teacher and not a ghost standing before him.
Just like Thomas, 2000 years later we wonder: What did it all mean? How could Jesus die on a cross, and why? What did that death mean—and certainly what did resurrection mean for Jesus’s closest friends and followers? Jesus is reappearing before his friends to remind them that they now carry on his healing, reconciling mission.
We are just like Thomas. But if we ask to see those wounds in the world, we, as the Body of Christ, also commit ourselves to working to bring healing, restoration, and justice to the places where those wounds exist—even if they are hard to see.
Jesus’s wounds are the signs of the power of God, not God’s weakness. They are the signs that Jesus has broken open the ways of death and destruction that governed the world. Jesus’s wounds remind us that our own wounds testify to the possibility and power of resurrection in our own lives through God’s steadfast lovingkindness, mercy, and grace. Jesus received those wounds for refusing to fight evil with evil, as he has been tempted to do from the time of his temptation in the wilderness by Satan at the beginning of his ministry, and as his followers had been tempted to do as the arresting authorities arrived to take Jesus into custody. Violence cannot overcome violence. Only love can. And love in action is the power of God in action-- and our own embodiment of Jesus as his Body, wounded and beautiful all at once.
Jesus invites us to bring our wounds and our doubts to him: they are honest signs of our paths to God, no matter how twisty or difficult. Jesus is our living breathing, wounded Savior who has overcome the worst humans and empires. Jesus invites us into living God’s dream for us and for all creation: a restored life, a resurrected life. Alleluia!
Preached at the 505 on April 23, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am Eucharists at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
Readings:
Citations:
Pope Francis, “Touching the Wounds of Jesus,” Morning Meditation in the Chapel of the Dominus Sanctae Marthae, July 3, 2013.
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