"DOUBTING THE WOUNDED CHRIST"

Rev. James Singleton

 4/11/10
JOHN 20:19-28

Here we are at the second Sunday of the Easter season, the season that celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus and yet what is it that lies at the very heart of our resurrection passage about Jesus’ appearances to his disciples but the wounds he received on the cross. Notice what a central role his wounds play in this passage.

Even though Jesus walks through walls and greets the huddled disciples with a word of peace, it is only after he shows them his wounds do they recognize him and begin to rejoice. And notice just exactly what it is that doubting Thomas doubts. Doubting Thomas doesn’t really doubt that it is possible for a person to be raised from the dead. Most Jews believed that. But what he doubts is that this Jesus who was crucified was raised from the dead with his wounds intact.

Thomas did not say that unless I see him walk through walls, I will not believe; what he said was unless I see his wounds I will not believe.

Why is it important that Jesus still bears his wounds in the Resurrection? Why should the wounds be the reason for the disciples rejoicing and Thomas’ doubting? Why didn’t Jesus leave his wounds behind rather than bear them forever?

In Graham Green’s novel, The End of the Affair, there’s a woman who loves a man named Maurice. She’s looking at Maurice and one day she notices that he has a horrible scar on his shoulder. She asks him why he has the scar and he’s reluctant to tell about it at first, but finally he tells the story.

He was working one day with some others on a wall and the wall was going up but they didn’t make the wall quite right and it began to crumble. There was a small, frail man beneath where the wall was coming down and what Maurice did was to position himself over this small frail man so that the masonry would fall on him which it did and caused terrible gashes in his shoulder.

As she looked at that scar she says that she hopes he has that scar through all of eternity. Why? Because the scar reveals what is essential about his character. The scar reveals the kind of person that he is.

Jesus’ scars endure throughout all eternity because they tell us the kind of person that he is and what he did. His wounds remind us that He positions himself between us and the walls that fall upon us in life. His wounds remind us that he understands what it means to be hurt. They remind us that he knows what it means to feel sorrow and pain. They remind us that he is willing to give his life for our lives.

Only a wounded Christ can understand how broken we can become; only a wounded Christ can know how crushing this world can be and still give us hope to overcome it.

A television reporter was reporting on Easter services that were taking place in one of the tent cities that have sprung up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She concluded her report by saying that despite the fact that this poor country has suffered even more because of the earthquake, yet ironically, the miseries of the people seem only to have intensified their faith.

Who else understands their wounds and offers them the hope of new life more than the wounded Christ? What good would be a soft and smooth Christ to a hard and torn people?

Only a wounded Christ can speak to our broken hearts and hold out the promise that even though weeping may linger for the night, joy will come in the morning because he knows both the night and the morning.

Only a wounded Christ can give us hope against evil in a world that is wracked and ripped by bombings, murders, brother against brother. He knows what it is like to be hated, to be spit upon, to be tortured and killed. But the wounded risen Christ gives hope that resurrection will overcome all the violence the world can do to us and God’s righteousness will triumph over evil.

Only a wounded Christ reveals that, though our sins cling to us like filth and a holy God should be repelled by us, this God is willing to suffer whatever we do to Him and still accept us into His heart.

Only a wounded Christ knows what death is and can give the hope that no longer is the grave our final resting place, but it is only a rest stop on our journey to our eternal home.

Poet Edward Shillito put it this way:

            If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;

            Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;

            We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow,

            We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars.

            The other gods were strong; by Thou wast weak;

            They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;

            But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,

            And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

Maybe right now you are saying to yourself, “I want to believe that. I want to believe that God understands the pain and sorrows that I feel. I want to believe that my sins are truly forgiven; I want to believe that nothing this world does to me will defeat me—but I just can’t.

You don’t doubt that there is some sort of power in the universe called God, but you doubt that such a power truly understands what you suffer and go through. And you doubt that such a power can truly offer you hope and relief from the hardships in life. You doubt that this God has wounds and you doubt that this God can heal your wounds.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, spoke of what made him an atheist in his autobiography. The sights he saw daily in his life as a physician made him doubt that a loving God who cares for us existed.

He spoke of seeing a child full of pain whose limbs were twisted and face distorted. There could not be a God who understands and cares, he concluded. Doyle could not believe that, if God existed, that God has wounds.

• Maybe you’ve been having a hard time accepting the Easter message of victory because of the defeats you have seen and experienced.
• Maybe you are having a tough time accepting the Easter message of new life because the old life still clings like a shrunken garment you cannot get off.
• Maybe you have been skeptical of the Easter message of life after death because the death of a loved one has such a grip on your brain and heart.

Church historian Dr. Martin Marty recalls a summer day of his boyhood when one of those grand miracles of childhood occurred. A watermelon truck overturned right in front of his house. The uninjured driver jumped out to watch hopelessly as scores of neighborhood children raced to the scene of that blessed event and dove into the spilled cargo for a sticky picnic. And it all happened right in front of Martin’s house! That was the good  news.

The bad news was that he was out of town that day visiting his grandmother! Life is like that sometimes. Where the action is, we aren’t. So it was true of Thomas. So it is often true of us.

Easter is where the action is. Like the bouncing watermelons Christ burst forth from the grave, wounds and all, to bring the message that surpasses all messages. But Thomas wasn’t there. The other disciples were feasting on the watermelon sweetness of Jesus come to life again, but he missed it.

We don’t know where he was and it really doesn’t matter where he was, we know where he wasn’t. He missed it and so he doubted.

Maybe you feel like you missed the overturned watermelon truck. You have all of these doubts inside of you about Easter and resurrection and a wounded Christ who understands and promises you the same victory over life and death that has claimed him.

One of the most profound questions I was asked by one of the students in my Pastor’s Class this year was: “Is it OK to have some doubts? I have been hurt by so many people that I’m not always sure I can trust Jesus yet.”

She has wounds and she isn’t sure this Jesus has wounds that will make him understanding and trustworthy.  If you feel like you haven’t, as yet, really and fully experienced the Easter event, don’t despair. Thomas, too, did not experience it at first either. We all have a propensity to doubt.

But notice that eventually Thomas came to believe and notice how he came to believe. He came to believe when he came back to the gathered church. Most people make a terrible mistake. Because they have some doubts; because life has not been what they hoped for they leave the church and go out on their own.

Thomas did not encounter the risen Lord out there. He encountered him in here among the other disciples. The girl in Pastor’s Class who has some doubts still made her confession of faith and was baptized into the wounded Christ. One day, if she stays close to the church and the people of God, she will come to learn that she can trust this wounded Christ with her life, her pains, and her death.

You may have doubts today, but one day you will come to this table and experience a love like never before; you will feel a burden of guilt lift; you will feel like you are communing with your loved one who has gone on beyond this world; you will have your heart strangely warmed and know for the first time that God does understand you and there is hope in the very place where you thought you were dead.

Keep coming to where the disciples gather and one of these days you who doubt now will experience the Wounded Christ and know what all the excitement is about. Then you, too, will fall on your knees, like Thomas, and proclaim, “My Lord and my God!”

AMEN.