Text: Luke 24: 36b-48
“By the Mark”
Introductory remarks by Steve prior to the sermon.
“I will know my savior when I come to him, by the mark where the nails have been.” That’s a line from a song by Gillian Welch, a song I’ll play for you in just a few minutes. You can find it on Welch’s first album from back in 1996, “Revival,” a collection of ballads that speak to the human condition in its glories and degradations. It’s a song that captures the irony and bewilderment of the post Easter stories found in the Gospels. And it’s a song that manages to speak into the heart of what it means to recognize and find Jesus after all that transpired in the events surrounding Easter. “When I have crossed over, I will shout and sing,” Welch puts it. “I will know my savior by the marks where the nails have been.”
But let me back up a little bit, and review where we’ve been, the better to understand where we are today. Since the beginning of Lent, we’ve been immersed in the Gospel of Luke, concentrating on the parables that Jesus tells throughout his ministry. My wager has been that we need to understand the stories Jesus tells if we are to understand the story that Jesus finally becomes. The parables are a lead up toward, a preparation for, the final story that Luke tells about Jesus, a story that forms the core of our existence as people of faith. Jesus taught by way of stories, and it is, finally, a story that we depend upon as well – not philosophy, not an argument, not a metaphysical proof, not a creed, not a series of propositions, not even a series of doctrines. When Jesus disappears after the resurrection, he becomes a series of stories that his followers tell about him, stories that have the capacity to strengthen and uphold human lives. In exactly the same way, when we come to the end of the Gospel of Luke, we too are left with a flimsy and yet unbelievably powerful story – a parable in other words.
Originally, I imagined leaving the parables behind as Easter receded into the rearview, and in a way that’s what’s happening this morning. But I found myself lingering in the Gospel of Luke this week, thinking more about the stories that Luke tells about Jesus. I found myself wanting to read and reread the details of one of Jesus’s most famous post-resurrection appearances for the wisdom it contains. There are three features of the story that speak to us, and I’d like to spend time with each of them: the isolated room in which the disciples seal themselves; the marks upon the flesh of the risen Jesus, and the bizarre scene that occurs at the end of the story, as Jesus asks his disciples for something to eat. Each of those moments speaks into our lives, and each of them call for our careful attention.
First, the room. Luke’s account merely tells us that the disciples were gathered together in an enclosed space, while John’s Gospel elaborates on the room. The disciples are enclosed within it because of their fear. It’s a grave, a mausoleum, a tomb. It’s the scene of failure, of fear, of miscalculation. It’s a significant site for what it tells us about resurrection life. Even after the rumors had begun circulating, even after Easter Sunday had come and gone, things continued for the disciples much as they had before. They were still there in Jerusalem, huddled in fear. They don’t suddenly come into themselves. They don’t suddenly exhibit confidence and courage. They don’t turn into the bold and persuasive people that we meet later in the narrative. They have to become that. They have to work at it, and to undergo a process of recovery. In the first days and weeks after Easter, they’re simply frightened and disoriented human beings, huddled in a room, hoping no one will find them.
Have you ever felt like that? Trapped in your fear? Locked up in your regret? Holed up inside some mistake that you made, some opinion that you’ve formed, a situation that threatens to engulf you? There are the major scenes that send us into hiding and retreat, akin to the scene the disciples find themselves in. But there are also the minor ones that gnaw at us. I remember when I offered my very first class, back in 2011, no longer a teaching assistant, but now a full on teacher. I had years of training behind me by then, and I had taught dozens, maybe even a hundred, class sessions during my doctoral work. I had experience being in front of people, and I had a vote of confidence from those who had given me the job. But this felt new, and the fact that my first outing happened to be at Harvard – well, would it be too much to say that I was scared out of my wits?
Here’s how it went down. I had spent time preparing what I thought was a decent introductory lecture, but as the hour progressed, I could feel that it wasn’t going well. Students were restless and distracted, and whatever I was saying wasn’t connecting. I tried to shift directions as I went, omitting portions of the lecture, improvising other portions, which made it worse. And so there I was, a brand new teacher on campus, feeling like a fraud and a fool. When it was over, I felt embarrassed, and I just retreated up to the office I had been given. I shut the door and I just sat there for a long time, wondering if I belonged in that setting, wondering if word would get around about just how bad the new guy actually was.
It sounds melodramatic, I know, but such was the state of mind in which I found myself. It was a version of the isolation room that we all sometimes find ourselves in. Call it a minor version, but it’s a version all the same of that room in which the disciples find themselves. Shamed and silenced by their own defeat, afraid to poke their heads out for fear of the consequences. Have you ever dwelt in such a room, whether a minor variation, or a major one, along the lines of the disciples? What happened to you when you were waiting in that room?
The first detail of the story, the locked room, is a realistic enough feature of human life. We know it from experience. But I believe we can recognize the second detail as well, even if we don’t always name it in the way Luke does. The second detail is when Jesus suddenly appears among the disciples. He hasn’t knocked. He hasn’t entered the room by the usual means – through a door or maybe a window. He’s simply there, and what he says is this: Peace be with you. The disciples are understandably unnerved. Who wouldn’t be? They express skepticism that it is indeed Jesus, but he simply says, “look at my hands and my feet.” And he invites their scrutiny and their touch. He invites them to feel his open wounds.
The implications of that scene are several. First, it hints that at our most lonely or isolated, in our most confused or shameful or fearful moments, God is not content to leave us there. It suggests that there is a way out of the room, and that there is a gracious presence available to guide us out of the claustrophobia of fear, shame, or immobility. Is the presence of Jesus in that room a way of suggesting that in our darkest moments, there arrives a presence to unlock our captive hearts, to nudge us back out the door, to help us recover our bearings, our voices, our courage, our very humanity? Our text hints that somehow and in some way, Jesus arrives to free us, to persuade us to trust the world and ourselves once again, to let us know that it’s OK to leave that cocoon, that enclosure. And I think we know what that feels like, even if we’re not always used to naming it Jesus. It’s the willingness to risk love again after having your heart broken. It’s the willingness to relax and trust life again after a long illness. It’s the courage to face a classroom of students again after a humiliating debacle. That courage and resolve comes from somewhere – a voice within us or without us urging us to get back up and to get out there, no matter the damage, no matter the consequences. Luke invites us to hear that voice, within us or without, as the voice of the risen one, calling us forth.
But there’s also the matter of the wounds. Why, I wonder, do the Gospel writers insist on a wounded resurrection body? Why not render the risen Jesus perfected, whole, mended? It’s interesting to note that gospel writers do precisely the opposite of what we tend to do when one that we love dies. At a funeral or wake, we tend to display a healthy and whole image of the one we celebrate, taken ten or twenty or sometimes more years prior to their death. We present an image as we wish to remember the one we love. It would be cruel, or maybe even perverse, to display an image from their final moments, at their most vulnerable, at the height of their passage between life and death. And yet that’s not what the gospel writers do. They refuse to pretty up Jesus for his resurrection appearance. They insist on his wounds. Why?
Just before his crucifixion, Jesus warned his disciples that many will come in his name, claiming, “I am he!” “Don’t be deceived,” Jesus tells them. “Don’t be led astray.” The ancient world abounded in false messiahs and prophets, but the 21st century does as well. There are always voices about us promising redemption of some sort. There are always figures around who claim to have a cure for what ails us, a way of shoring up our psychic needs. There’s always a false messiah somewhere to supply the missing piece within our hearts, the piece that will, at last, make us healthy and happy and whole. But what if that’s to miss the whole point of the story? What if the wounds are there to signify that resurrection happens in spite of the wounds, that life can occur even amidst pain, that joy can be found even in the most desperate circumstances? What if, at bottom, the Christian narrative didn’t promise wholeness or happiness at all, but rather a way to live into the fragile and vulnerable people we actually are?
Or take it from a slightly different angle. What if the wounds are there to help us discern the false prophets from the true, to help us discern authentic religion from inauthentic religion? The authentic religion that Jesus presents to his disciples openly confronts the wounds of the world. It openly embraces struggle and imperfection. It insists on the importance of bodily life in all of its vulnerability, fragility, and neediness. It refuses an empty affirmation of happiness and upward mobility. It insists on confronting the struggles of the world head on. The risen Jesus says: look at my feet and hands. Look at the places where I have felt pain. Touch those places and see.
I know that can be hard, but it’s part of what it means to inhabit the parable of the risen Christ. The false messiahs of the world, the false messiahs within each of our hearts, would have us look away. The false prophets without and within us would use religion so that we might not see, so that we might not touch, the wounds of the world. I occasionally hear from people that tell me that I, and by extension, our church, are so far out on a limb that they no longer recognize what we do as biblical, or as Christian. To that, I can only respond by appealing to the post resurrection appearance of Jesus in Luke. Confront my wounds, Jesus says. Reach out and touch them. Don’t be afraid. That’s what it means to follow a crucified and risen savior, and it forms the core of our life together here at FCCOL. We center ourselves in the story, the parable, that Luke tells at the end of his Gospel.
But the room of fear, and the wounds, aren’t the entirety of the story. There’s more. Following his invitation to see and to touch his wounds, Jesus offers what seems to be the most perplexing non-sequitur in all of literature. To a group of disciples reeling from the events of the previous days, who are stunned by the sudden appearance of their friend, and who have been invited to study his crucified body, Jesus says, “Hey, guys, do you have anything to eat?” They do, and so they bring him a piece of broiled fish, which he eats in their presence. It’s certainly a sign that this is no mere spirit before them, but it’s also an affirmation of the kind of life Jesus and his disciples have shared with one another. It’s as if Jesus is saying: this is what we do together – do you remember? This is how we discover one another – do you remember? This is how we find life after upheavals – do you remember? This is what we did before the disaster, and it’s what we’ll do after it – don’t you remember all of that? It’s how you’ll stay human in a world that can do such profound damage to bodies and lives. It’s a way of enacting paradise even in the midst of hell. “Do you have anything to eat?”
I thought of that passage often last weekend, when Tom McDermott and Tom Piazza were with us. I thought of it when we shared a communal pizza dinner prepared by Malik and Zahida. I thought of it when Tom Piazza read his description of a sacramental feast held on Mardi Gras day. And I thought of it when we shared a small dinner of fish tacos with Malik and Zahida last Sunday night. We brought what we had prepared, and Zahida prepared some delicious Pakistani dishes, and as we sat down, we all felt blessed to be in one another’s company. We reveled in the moment, even as we recognized the irony of just what had brought us together. After we were done eating, Tom McDermott wandered over to the piano, as he’s prone to do, and played through a repertoire of classical and Romantic pieces, after which Tom Piazza, not to be outdone, threw in some jazz standards. When that was over, Malik shared a video with us of a phenomenal Pakistani musician and we stood there in awe for what must have been nearly twenty minutes, marveling at his voice. And when the night came to an end, we were all a little stunned at the goodness we had tasted, the goodness we had felt in one another’s company. I don’t know if there’s any better indication of resurrection life than that. In the midst of profound pain, somehow, somehow, something greater and more powerful by far takes hold of us. It goes by many names, but Luke and the other gospel writers dare to name it Jesus.
I’d like to play Gillian Welch’s song “By the Mark” for you now. It’s a reminder that God comes searching for us when we’re trapped in a room of fear and loneliness. It’s a reminder that Jesus invites us to encounter his wounds, which is to say, the wounds of the world around us. And it’s a reminder that when we do, we stand a chance of encountering an unshakeable joy that encourages and strengthens us, that holds us and helps us to stand in the world. “I will know my savior when I come to him, by the mark where the nails have been.”
By the mark where the nails have been.
