Wounded Jesus: April 12

   John 20:19-31                                     Year A Easter 2   

             I grew up with three older brothers.  They were a rowdy group, often getting in trouble, frequently injured.  They taught me to judge potential friends by how many scars they had.  They said, if someone doesn’t have any scars, they clearly aren’t good friend material. (I guess it was just a measure of toughness for them.)  I didn’t use that tool for judgment very often, especially since I was 9 at the time, and not many 9 years old have a lot of scars.  That said, it’s something I have always noticed.  Scars can provide snap shots of you life on your skin. 

For a long time, my most impressive scar was from a knee surgery I had in 10^th grade. I gained a few more scars over the years, but they all pale in comparison to my MRSA scar.  A few years ago, I got a serious infection in my leg.  It was resisting all antibiotics and since they were worried I might lose my leg, they decided just to open it up and pour the antibiotics in.  They did this three times over a one month period.  The problem was, when you open up the same part of a leg that many times, it doesn’t heal well.  I had an open wound for almost 6 months. They tried everything: stitches, staples, several wound vacuums and finally they cauterized it….which is burning. 

The whole time that was going on, I prayed fervently for a scar.  I didn’t care what it looked like, I just wanted that wound closed.  I have to admit, it’s one ugly scar…I mean truly ugly.  Yet even though I kind of hate it….it’s so much better than an open wound.

            When I was praying for my scar, I thought a lot about Jesus’ wounds.  I was confined to a bed for 2 months, so I had a lot of time to think of such things.  I have always loved that Jesus came back with scars, that there was evidence of his pain and his vulnerability.  But as I contemplated my wound, I wondered why Jesus didn’t come back with wounds instead of scars, like open wounds, maybe bleeding a little.  Because the wound that he experienced being nailed to the cross and pierced by a sword, would never have scarred over in just a few days.  Then again, coming back from the dead wasn’t an expected  outcome, so I suppose a wound healing a little more quickly isn’t exactly the headline of this story.  Still, it’s something I think about a lot.

The Gospel of John was originally written in Greek.  If you look at our Gospel reading, you will see it doesn’t say scar.  It says mark. The Greek is unclear, probably purposefully so.  When Jesus came back and offered his body to Thomas, he didn’t refer to his wounds as scars or marks.  He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.”  Notice, that the word scar isn’t used.  Maybe Jesus did  have open wounds. There is one famous painting that pops up a lot when reading commentaries about this text.  It’s by Caravaggio.  I can’t look at it without grimacing a little because Thomas is actually putting his finger into the open wound. I thought it was just Caravaggio being a little dramatic, but it’s certainly possible that Jesus still had an open wound and he was offering it to Thomas. 

Now some of you might be thinking, who cares if it’s a wound or a scar.  That’s not what this text is about.  It’s about Thomas doubting and needing physical evidence.  That is one perspective.   But I think Jesus’ wounds or scars matter.  He could have returned from the dead completely whole, without blemish or flaw.  He didn’t.  He returned to his disciples, the very same disciples who had denied him and abandoned him and were now hiding in a locked room.  He returned wounded. He didn’t return that way to shame them or make them feel guilty.  He returned with those wounds because they were part of the story, not just his story, but the story of what would become the Christian Church.  They were also evidence of not just his horrible death, but his humanity, his willingness to be vulnerable, even to the point of death.

Sometimes I make the mistake of reading the comments section in an article or social media. Ok, I do it a lot.  You will remember that not too long ago the panels which told the story of those enslaved by George Washington were removed from the president’s house just a few blocks from here.  This was as a result of an executive order from the president called, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History".  Many of the comments were against the removal.  They wanted the story of those enslaved people to be told.  But many comments were along the lines of, that’s in the past. Why are we still talking about slavery? What does that accomplish?

 I am sure those same people would wonder why we read the names of those children of God who were auctioned and sold in the one of the largest slave auctions in the history of our country.  What is that accomplishing? Are we trying to tarnish the history of our nation? No, that history was tarnished long ago.  What we are trying to do is honor the names that we know.  We don’t know their whole stories.  We just know their names, not even all their names.  We know this one portion of their story because they were sold like cattle to the highest bidder.    We know the very worst days of their life.  So that is the part of the story we tell.

Slavery isn’t just a scar on our nation. It’s an open wound.  True, we stopped most forms of slavery.  We stopped the wound from gushing blood. But we, as a nation, we did very little to aid in the healing of that wound.  Some people think in talking about slavery, we are reopening the wounds, but I think we are finally pouring in some necessary antibiotic.  We are letting the light in, the possibility of healing.  We still have a lot more to do when it comes to the healing of our nation.  We will one day have to repair the wounds that are currently being inflicted.  It’s a never ending process.
            Jesus taught us all an important lesson when he returned to his disciples wounded and open.  He wasn’t there to assign blame. He was there to provide peace and forgiveness.  He could have shared the peace and forgiveness without the wounds. However, in showing the wounds, he showed us how we get to peace and forgiveness.  First we have to acknowledge the hurt, the shame and the sin.  We have to allow ourselves the same vulnerability that Jesus showed.  Because even when wounds heal, there is still a story to tell, a story to understand. That is the only way to get to true peace.   It’s the only way we heal.

Forgiveness is Self-Preservation: John 20:19-31

Year A, Easter 2     
 April 23, 2017

            On March 28^th of 2010, Conor McBride shot his girlfriend of three years.  Conor and Ann had been fighting for over 38 hours and he simply broke.  He immediately regretted it and turned himself in. When her parents were notified, their first question was whether Conor was with her in the ICU where she struggled for her life.  They were shocked to learn that the boy they considered a son, was the one who shot her.   When Ann’s father (Andy) sat with his dying daughter, he felt her say, “Forgive him.”  He said “No,” but he kept hearing the voice of his daughter telling him to forgive the man who shot her.  After four days on life support, her parents realized they would have to let her go.  Her father later said, “I realized it was not just Ann asking me to forgive Conor, it was Jesus Christ, and I hadn’t said no to him before, and I wasn’t going to start then. It was just a wave of joy, and I told Ann: ‘I will. I will.’ ”[1]

            As Andy described what happened, he mentioned that the wounds on his daughter reminded him of the wounds of Jesus Christ.  Apparently she put her hands in front of her face when her boyfriend raised the gun, giving her wounds on her hands and her head.   The author of the Gospel of John reminds us of the scars that Jesus bore when he appeared to his disciples after his resurrection.  He showed them his hands and his side. The scars on his hands were from the nails.  His side bore the mark of the sword that pierced him.  There is no reference to scars on his head, but we know that his head was undoubtedly wounded when the crown of thorns was forced onto his head.  Even if those scars were not present, the disciples would have seen them in their mind’s eye as they looked at the risen Christ for the first time.

            The Gospel of John says that the disciples were hiding for fear of the Jews.   I have a hunch that they were hiding from more than just the Jews.  Remember that when Jesus appears to them this first time, they have already found the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene already reported that she spoke to the resurrected Christ.  What do you think they were more afraid of, the fact that he was dead and gone, or the possibility that he was alive and they would have to face him?  The disciples had not performed very admirably in the last days of Jesus’ life.  Peter had denied him.  Most had abandoned him.   To make matters worse, instead of combing the streets looking for Jesus, they were now hiding in a locked room.  Yes, they were hiding from the Jews.  They were the Jews and they were hiding from their own shame.

Suddenly, Jesus appeared in the room. Before anyone had time to react, he proclaimed, “Peace be with you.”  With those four words, he showed them his hands and his side.  Then he breathed on them.  Normally, I am not too keen on people breathing on me, but this was not just any breath.  This was the breath of God, the Holy Spirit.  With it came joy, hope, and forgiveness.  “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  With this breath and these words, Jesus was not only forgiving them, he was giving them the authority, the responsibility to forgive others.  All of that makes sense to me.  What does not make sense is the part about retaining sins.  Did Jesus mean that the disciples could withhold God’s forgiveness?

            Ann’s parents did more than just forgive Conor, the man who murdered their daughter.  They visited him in prison every month.  They worked with Conor’s parents and the district attorney to minimize the sentence that was given to Conor using a model called “restorative justice.” This was not easy for anyone, but they felt that was what Ann would have wanted, and what God was asking of them.   When asked about it, Ann’s mother said, “Conor owed us a debt he could never repay. And releasing him from that debt would release us from expecting that anything in this world could satisfy us... I think that when people can’t forgive, they’re stuck... Forgiveness for me was self-preservation.” 

            The disciples weren’t just literally stuck in a locked room.  To some degree, their hearts were locked, buried in a place that was so deep, it was only the breath of God, the forgiveness of God that could bring air to their suffocating lungs.  With the forgiveness of Jesus, they could start coming up for air.  However, it could not end there.  Jesus was forgiving them, so that they could proclaim that forgiveness to others.   Being forgiven only got them half way there.  They might have come up for air, but if they wanted to truly open their hearts, they would have to forgive others.

            We often think that in forgiving others, we are making some sort of sacrifice, or giving them a gift.  Yet that’s the thing about gifts, they are only good if you release them.  Furthermore, we do not own this gift. It is God’s gift.  He just asked us to share that gift with others. A theologian wrote, “When you forgive you set a prisoner free. And then you discover the prisoner was you.”[2]

            I believe that is what Jesus meant when he said, “If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  If we choose not to forgive someone, we then take on their sin.  And unlike Jesus, we cannot absorb sin without having it affect us.  Another word for forgiveness is “to free” or to “let go.”  In giving us the power to forgive, Jesus gave us freedom, from not only our sins, but the sins of others.  If we don’t use that gift, we will find that while we might not be stuck in a locked room, we might as well be.  Because when we hold on to all of that sin, all of that shame, all of that anger, then our hearts are locked.  Do you think the disciples stayed in that room after they received the Holy Spirit…the breath of God? No, they opened that door and they claimed their freedom.  I think that most of us have little locks on our hearts.  We have them to protect us…but really they are just imprisoning us.  It’s time to open the doors. It’s time to claim our freedom.

 

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/can-forgiveness-play-a-role-in-criminal-justice.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[2] Lewis Smedes   (from article by Craig Barnes called “Crying Shame”)

April 27, 2014: John 20:19-31

Year A, Easter 2                                                        

 

During my first year of seminary, I had to read a book called We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families.  It was about the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.  There are two main tribes in Rwanda: the Hutus and the Tutsis.  They lived in relative peace, often as neighbors. The Hutus made up 85% of the population.  In 1994 Hutu extremists began a plot to wipe out the entire Tutsi population.  It is estimated that 800,000 Rwandans were killed in a matter of months, the majority were Tutsis.  Seventy percent of the Tutsi population was killed. That book was one of the most painful things I have ever read.  It primarily covered what led up to the genocide, the killing itself, and then a very brief aftermath. While I think about that book every time I see an article about Rwanda, I have not read much about it until this week.

Just this week I saw a piece in the New York Times magazine called, “Portraits of Reconciliation.”  This piece ran on the 20 year anniversary of the beginning of the genocide in Rwanda.  It was here that I read more about what came in the years after the genocide.  When the killing and looting finally ended, the Tutsis (the tribe that was almost obliterated) returned to their homes to find that they were living next door to people who had brutally murdered their families and driven them out.  As you can imagine, this was a difficult way to live.  There were court trials and some of the people who had committed the atrocities were sent to jail, but they eventually got out if they were convicted at all.  The justice system was not equipped for this kind of mass slaughter, and it certainly could not help people emotionally.

A Roman Catholic group aptly called “Pax Christi,” [1] stepped in and introduced a totally different model, reconciliation.  They[2] worked with small groups of Hutus and Tutsis and counseled them over many months.  At the end of the program, the perpetrator would formally request forgiveness from the victim.  If forgiveness was offered, the perpetrator would present the victim with an offering (usually food and banana beer).  

I often wonder what it was like for the disciples to see Jesus after they had abandoned him and denied him.  It probably had not occurred to them that they would see him again, certainly not so soon.  Jesus was aware of their angst and guilt and started with a fairly standard greeting, “Peace be with you.”  But then he followed it up with something a little new.  “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

It might seem strange that he did not tell them that they were forgiven.  They had committed some pretty egregious sins. One would think they needed that forgiveness.  If you were here on Maundy Thursday, you might remember that Jesus had already forgiven his disciples when he washed their feet.  He forgave them before they even knew that they needed to be forgiven.  So he did not have to tell them again. Now he was commissioning them to proclaim God’s forgiveness to other people.  We forgive one another in one sense, but when there is a sin that is committed, it is only God who can forgive.  What we do is tap into that that forgiveness.  We proclaim that forgiveness…which you would think would be easier to do than the actual forgiving…but it’s still pretty hard.

Each portrait in the Times’ piece depicted two people: the person who had perpetrated the crime and the person who had suffered from that crime.  One of the pictures depicts a man who killed a family and the mother of the family sits right next to him.  One story was about a woman who was chased from her village.  She became homeless and insane.  She returned to find her home destroyed.  Her husband was gone and she had to care for her children.  One of the men who looted her home asked her forgiveness.  She granted it (although not easily) and he brought 50 people, many who had committed atrocities during the genocide, and rebuilt her home.  In the interview the woman said, “Ever since then, I have started to feel better. I was like a dry stick; now I feel peaceful in my heart, and I share this peace with my neighbors.”[3]

When she compared herself to a dry stick, I was reminded of a line from Psalm 22 that we heard on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  “My strength is dried up like a potsherd.”  A potsherd is like an old piece of pottery you might find in the ground.  Sometimes we all feel that dryness.  It’s that feeling of being brittle and weak, like we might fall apart at any moment.  Or maybe we are just thirsty, in need of something to sustain us.  The thing that quenched her dry body and heart was the freedom to forgive.  Once she forgave, she was able to find peace and share that peace.

It is no wonder that Jesus brought both peace and a challenge to forgive when he came to the disciples.  He knew that they would need to share this message of forgiveness with others because it is not something that comes to us naturally.  It can be a very hard thing to do.  I have always found the line “If you retain the sins of any, they are retained” to be a little strange.  Does that mean that we can withhold God’s forgiveness?  Of course not.  We cannot control who God forgives.  But we can withhold forgiveness in the sense that when we refuse to forgive, we hold on to that sin…we retain it.  We become like a dry stick, brittle and weak. 

            When you look at the portraits, and I encourage you to do so, you will not see warm and fuzzy images.  Most of the people look pretty awkward. Some have become close, but most have not.  Part of the reason they forgave was because they had to live with these people.  It was the only way they could survive.  We think that when we forgive, when we share God’s forgiveness that it will be easy and natural.  Usually it’s not.  That dry and brittle feeling might stick around for awhile.  When Jesus returned, he made sure to show his disciples his wounds.  Even though he was back from the dead, he still carried his wounds.  Forgiving others…forgiving ourselves does not erase the wounds, it transforms them into something else.  Sometimes that transformation will take longer than 3 days….maybe longer than 3 or 30 years.

            The man who looted the home of the woman I quoted also spoke of the process of reconciliation.  He said, “I had lost my humanity because of the crime I committed, but now I am like any human being.”  It is amazing to me that we can lose our humanity.  People can take it from us; sin can take it from us.  At least it feels that way.  But God never takes away our humanity.  That is God’s gift to us.  We are created in God’s image and no one can change that.  We tarnish ourselves and we tarnish others, but God’s image is always there, waiting to shine through.

            It made me smile when I read that part of the reconciliation process is for the perpetrator to bring an offering of food and banana beer. I thought, that seems like a pretty pathetic offering in comparison to what they did.  Then I thought of what we offer to God on Sundays.  We bring wine and bread.  We might bring some food for the local food pantry, and then whatever money we can spare.  This is the offering we give to Jesus for his sacrifice on the cross.  At least the food they offer in Rwanda is fresh!  Those wafers are the most stale bread you can imagine. 

But that’s not really what the offering is about is it? Psalm 51 says, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.”  The banana beer and wine is nice, but what God really wants is a contrite heart and heart ready to forgive.  A broken and contrite heart might feel brittle and weak to us.  To God, it is the most beautiful and powerful thing we can offer. 

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[1] http://www.paxchristi.net/member-organizations/rwanda/193

[2] Association Modest et Innocent (AMI) was the specific group that worked in Rwanda.

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/06/magazine/06-pieter-hugo-rwanda-portraits.html?_r=0