By the Mark

from Sunday's Gospel John 20:19-31

Like most of you, I get way too much junk mail. The only mail I got yesterday was three pieces of junk mail. Ironically, all three of them said “ESCAPE” across the front in large letters. The first one offered to help me escape by installing a backyard spa. The second suggested that the perfect escape is to be found on a Mediterranean cruise. The final piece of mail was a bit anti-climactic after the idea of a port of call on the Côte d'azur. It offered the perfect early summer get-a-way to....Branson.

We all probably spend a lot more time thinking up ways to escape what’s going on in our lives than we realize. I imagine that, as they cowered in the upper room, escape was on the minds the disciples during that evening of the first day of the week. I imagine that escape was at the top of Thomas’ list.

Thomas gets a bad rap, when you think about it. Thomas was more of a pragmatist than a doubter. He was a plain-spoken straight-shooter. When Jesus decided to return to Judea to raise Lazarus – right in the back yard of the hostile authorities, Thomas was the one to say, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” What happened on that hill on Friday was exactly what Thomas expected.

We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with his friends when Jesus appeared to them. Maybe he was out checking on the rest of Jesus’ followers. Maybe he was fetching some food. Maybe he was so heartbroken that he couldn’t stand to be around anyone else.

What I find most curious is that seeing Jesus himself, in the flesh, wasn’t going to be enough for Thomas. To be convinced he needed to touch the marks of the nails  in Jesus' hands and the spear wound in Jesus’ side.

Every time I hear this passage, it reminds me of a song from Gillian Welch’s first album Revival. Welch is a singer-songwriter whose style combines Appalachian music, Bluegrass, and Americana. She was a co-producer and singer on the O Brother where Art Thou? soundtrack and had a cameo in the film.

When I cross over

I will shout and sing

I will know my savior

By the mark where the nails have been

 

By the mark where the nails have been

By the sign upon his precious skin

I will know my savior when I come to him

By the mark where the nails have been

The Holy Wounds of Christ have been a popular theme of devotion at various times in Christian history. Many altars, including ours, have five crosses incised in the top representing the wounds. Saints like Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis and Clare, and Julian of Norwich composed devotions and prayers about the wounds. I’ve often wondered if this devotion had something to do with living in a time of plague, pestilence, war and famine. Perhaps focusing on the wounds of Christ somehow helped people face their own troubles.

It’s out of this tradition that the writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th century German nun, came. Her meditations on the passion were the basis of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. I saw that movie when it came out, but I’ve never wanted to see it again, except for one scene. I realize the violence is probably much more realistic that what is shown in traditional “Jesus movies,” but it is really hard to take.

The one scene that I’ve always wanted to see again comes at the very end of the movie. As the camera pans away from Mary, kneeling in the mud, cradling the bloodied and broken body of her son, the screen suddenly goes black. Then there’s a loud, scraping noise, and you realize that it’s the stone rolling away. Light comes into the tomb, then linen wrappings settle onto the stone as if someone’s just step out of them, and then you see Jesus from the shoulders up. He’s as whole and sound and beautiful as he was before his torture and crucifixion. He closes his eyes, opens them, and then steps out into the light. As he does, the camera pans down to his hand at his side. There, right there, is a perfect mark of a nail. It’s healed, but it’s very much still there – a permanent part of his resurrected body

It’s significant that Jesus carried the marks of his suffering and death, his wounds, into the Resurrection. The promise of the Resurrection is not that we won’t be wounded. The promise of the resurrection is that we will be healed. The promise of the resurrection is that our wounds will be transformed.

Healing can begin now. All of us have been wounded, and most of us are afraid to look on those wounds. It’s not unlike the ordeal of the bandaid. You remember. When you were a child, a bandaid could make it all better. Even if there was no blood, no broken skin, we wanted to have a bandaid when we fell down.

If there were blood, the second worst thing your mother could say, after a couple of days, was “let’s look under the bandaid and see how it’s doing.”  And  the very worst thing she could say was “We better leave the bandaid off and let some air get to it.” Nooooooooo! But of course, mom was right. At a certain stage, the only way the wound would get better would be if we let some air and light get to it.

The wounds that we carry around with us, the unseen ones that come from living, are like that. At some point they’ll only get better if we let some air and light in. The idea of facing those wounds can be very frightening because it involves acknowledging our pain. But there are people who are ready to help us, to be our companions on the way.  And above all, there is Christ our brother, who has lived our life, who has walked through this beautiful, wild, wounded world and who knows the pain and suffering we’ve known, and then some. Never again do we need to face those wounds alone.

By the mark where the nails have been

By the sign upon his precious skin

I will know my savior when I come to him

By the mark where the nails have been.

from Revival - Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, BMI 1996