Third Sunday after Easter

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I don’t remember this story, but my mother does. She had taken us kids to a retreat for mothers and their children. I was about four. One day, the leader organized an interesting activity: She had all the kids stand in a line behind a sheet. The kids were to hold one hand over the sheet. Then the mothers were challenged to identify their own kids.

Could you identify someone by their hands? Usually, when we scan a crowd looking for a person, we look at faces, followed by height and hair color. But hands?

My mother was able to find me quickly that day because, as she puts it, I have the long rectangular finger nails that run in my father’s family. My unusual nail shape gave me away and made me identifiable. As a teenager, I didn’t like this story because it sounded to me like she was saying, “Your nails are weird, and that’s how I knew you.”

In a way, though, this ties in with the gospel story today. Jesus enters the room of disciples. They react with fear. In order to convince them that it is really him, he identifies himself by his hands and feet. To proof to them that he is not a ghost but real, he lets them touch his hands and feet. Why?

Because Jesus’ hands and feet bear the wounds or scars of his crucifixion. The risen Lord is still the wounded Lord. His resurrection did not make undone what had happened before. His suffering and dying have not been erased. Rather, in his resurrection, his suffering and dying have been overcome. Jesus has new life, yet that new life is shaped by what happened before. His scars are still visible. His scars are part of his identity now. His scars identify him.

I have read that this truth is hugely important to the disabled community. For our brothers and sisters with disabilities, the fact that Jesus returned with an imperfect body is incredibly meaningful. It brings Jesus much closer to them; it assures them that he does indeed understand their challenges and enters into them with the presence of his wounded self.

Yet the significance of this scarred Savior goes even further. It covers not just physical wounds, but emotional and psychological wounds, as well.

To explain, let’s start by looking at the disciples. They had promised to follow Jesus even unto death. However, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus and that threat of death suddenly looked much more real, they all fled. Then they all watched in horror as their friend and master died on the cross.

These disciples are traumatized, both by the horrors of Jesus’ death and by the guilt and shame over their own actions.

Now Jesus comes to them. That alone is a sign of love and forgiveness. Jesus had every right to give up on these losers and find himself some new friends. But here he is, coming back to them.

Next Jesus offers them forgiveness. “Peace”, he says. Shalom. Luke the gospel writer often uses this word in the sense of “salvation”. In his great love, Jesus holds out salvation to his friends. In spite of their failures, in spite of their fear, in spite of their confusion and slowness to believe, Jesus forgives them and offers them salvation.

Then Jesus grants them the proof they need to come to full faith in his resurrection: he lets them touch his wounded body, he eats a piece of fish, and he explains how the Bible pointed in the direction of God doing something like this all along. Touch, meal, and scripture convince the disciples and leads them to joyful Easter faith.

Once they got that, Jesus sends them out to offer such forgiveness to the world. “You are witnesses,” he says. You have experienced that resurrection is real. You have experienced how wonderful forgiveness feels. You have experienced the peace offered by Jesus Christ. Now go and tell everyone you meet about this.

And the disciples do. Our reading from the book of Acts gives an example for that.

The part we read starts with, “When Peter saw it.” What did he see? He and John had just healed a crippled man, and that miracle was attracting a crowd. Peter takes advantage of having an audience and preaches the gospel to them.

It is remarkable that in his sermon, Peter accuses his listeners of having caused Jesus’ death. “You handed him over,” “you killed the Author of life.” Harsch, isn’t it? After having laid this out, Peter acknowledges that they had acted in ignorance. They didn’t know what they were doing.

And then Peter invites everyone to repent and turn to God so their sins can be wiped out. Peter, who had himself received the gift of forgiveness from Jesus, is now passing that gift on to others. He is a powerful witness because he himself experienced the release, the joy, the hope, the peace that comes with being forgiven.

Peter carries his own scars of shame and failure and mistakes and regrets. By the grace of Christ, he was forgiven and was granted new life, a new beginning, new hope, new faith. Yet those dark days of betrayal are not undone. They are not forgotten. They are overcome, but not erased. They shape who Peter is and how Peter witnesses about his Redeemer.

The fact that Peter himself was scarred makes him such a passionate, effective preacher. He was a witness not just to the resurrection of Christ, but also to the new life we receive through the grace and forgiveness of the risen Lord.

The things we experience – traumas, failures, accidents, betrayals – they shape us and make us who we are. Our living Lord offers us his help to overcome them, to find new life after them, to find freedom and hope by acknowledging that they happened and then building a new, better, more faithful life.

I am German. When I grew up in Germany, we were taught from a young age what happened in the Holocaust. We knew what we had done, and we felt terrible about it. Lots of guilt and shame. It definitely shaped us as a nation.

Germany is scarred by what we did during the Third Reich. The country is letting the scars be visible. For example, all over the country, there are small bronze stones embedded in the sidewalk before houses, informing pedestrians of the names and ages of Jewish people who had been deported from that house and killed. It makes one think every time you see them.

I believe that the work of showing our scars openly and admitting our guilt publicly and educating all citizens truthfully has helped Germany to build a new life. We repented, we admitted that we had done wrong, we apologized, and we made sure to rebuild in a new way, a better way, a way that leads to more peace.

Peter is calling his audience to repentance. According to Professor Matt Skinner, repentance means to name what is not right, be it in personal life or society. It is recognizing a new truth and changing one’s understanding, as in “OMG, I thought that was normal, and now I realize it is not!”

Jesus bears scars. Peter bears scars. Germany bears scars. This nation bears scars. Everyone bears scars.

Might our witness be more effective if we don’t try to hide our scars, but are open and honest about them? Here is how Pastor Debbie Thomas expresses this thought in her blog “Journey with Jesus”:

“What would it be like to lead with our scars, instead of enslaving ourselves to society’s expectations of piety and prettiness?  Jesus proved that he was alive and approachable by risking real engagement.  Real presence.  As in: "Here is how you can recognize me.  By my hands and my feet.  See?  I have scars.  I have baggage.  I have history.  I am alive to pain, just as you are.  I am not immune; I am real.””

From whom do we accept compassion more readily, someone who seems to have the perfect life or someone who shares their own struggles?

From whom can we receive comfort more easily, someone who portrays strength or someone who shows weakness?

What message is more life-giving: you need to do your best to look perfect, or it’s okay to have scars, we all have them, but there is a blessed life to be had in spite of our scars; let me tell you how Jesus helped me with that.

Earlier I said that touch, meal, and scripture convince the disciples and lead them to joyful Easter faith. Touch, meal, and scripture offered by the risen Christ – that’s what we celebrate here each Sunday. We gather around the living Redeemer because he offers us grace to live with our many scars. He feeds us at his table and speaks to us through the Bible and gives us the message: I love you, I forgive you, your are beautiful in spite of your scars, and I would love for you to believe that and let it shape you. Claim the new life I offer, and tell others about it, so more and more people will rejoice in the good news that Alleluia, Christ is risen – he is risen indeed, alleluia!