John 20:19 – 29: 19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” 26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Today I want to talk about scars. There can be a lighter side to scars, the small ones, anyway. We may be able to speak easily and even jokingly about how we got this or that scar on our forehead or arm or leg. But this only works if the scars are small and don't really matter.

Scars mark the spot where there is a healed wound, a healed wound. Scars are signs of pain and healing. They speak of our body's amazing power to heal as well as our body's alarming vulnerability.

Scars are a blemish, the left-overs of past traumas or accidents. Scars mark the place that will never be the same again. If the wound is big enough, deep enough, a blemish always remains. Wounds that matter always leave a mark, a trace of themselves on the body, scars. Scars remind us that healing does not necessarily mean “just like new.” Is a patched bike tire “just like new?” Well, yes and no. Yes, because it now works. No, because it now has a patch. Scars, like a patch, remind us that we are healed yet we are not the same.

We sometimes hide scars, those that embarrass or shame. They can be too ugly. They can be too personal. With every scar comes a story. Some funny. Some not funny. Some terrible. Such is one scene from the 1975 classic, Jaws. The scientist, Matt Hooper, and Quint, the raw and rough sailor drinking heavily in the hold of Quint's small fishing boat, hunt for the great white that has terrorized Amity Island . Drink after drink, story after story, they show off scar after scar, story after story of shark attacks. It's all in fun and funny (especially when police chief, Martin Brody, desperate to join in takes a look down at the scar left from an appendectomy) until the stories get too personal and too tragic. Then the laughter shifts to seriousness and then to terribleness and dread. Scars make a good story. What amazes us is that scars play a part of John's resurrection story.

Last Sunday was Easter. Jesus is risen from the dead. Today the Gospel of John looks closely at this risen body of Jesus. What do we find? We find it scarred, holes left in the hands and side. What difference does this make, my friends, that we worship a risen yet scarred Lord Jesus Christ? Christ has risen, indeed. And risen, disfigured.

These scars are from Good Friday, from the nails pounded into his hands, and the spear thrown into his side. Even the resurrected, glorified body of Jesus, a body that can walk through walls (as John's gospel story tells us) bears the mark of past pain and suffering. Easter defeated death. Yes. But Easter did not erase the scars. Jesus lives. Jesus lives again, with scars. As John tells the story, the disciples know it is Jesus in their midst only after he has shown them his hands and his side, not in his supernatural appearing in a locked room, not even in his voice. How do we know we are in the presence of the risen Jesus Christ? . . . when we are in the presence of those scarred; in the presence of any and all whose lives and bodies carry the marks of past pain. Jesus chooses to reveal himself not in supernatural form, not in walking through locked doors, but in the marks of his suffering and death. Thomas wanted to know the risen Christ was real. So do you. So do I. Such knowing is in the scars.

This resurrection story stands in strong protest against those forms of Easter Christianity that are expressed only in terms of victory, power, and glory, triumph and success, those expressions of faith that refuse a place for the scarred after the empty tomb.

It would be my prayer that Finlandia University be a place where we sense permission to share our scars, the funny, of course, but more importantly, the not funny; a place where we can tell the stories of our failed attempts, our blunders, our fears, our lost loves, our bad decisions, our mistakes, our illnesses, our addictions, our guilts, our regrets.

We gather this afternoon with our own scars, some big, some small, some on the inside, some on the surface. We come with our blemishes, our marks, we come like patched inner tubes.

John tells us that the hole left in Jesus' side was big enough for Thomas to put his fist inside it. In this large, ugly scar in Jesus' side there is room for all of our scars. This is the good news: Jesus has not hid his scars so that we need not hide ours. Jesus takes our scarred bodies and spirits into his own scarred, yet risen body so that we may live scarred . . . yes, but risen with Christ to newness of life. Amen

-Rev. Dr. Philip Johnson

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