Easter 2 Year C

John 20: 19-31

He showed them his hands and his side.

Many of us have physical scars, gained in a whole range of ways, and most of us rarely show off those scars. If we have scars from surgery, they’re usually in places that are hidden by clothing. Surgeons take care to make cuts in ways that minimise the visual impact after healing. And when we have new scars we tend to keep them covered, keep them away from other people. On the whole we’re a little bit squeamish about what’s below the surface in our own bodies or other people’s.

But this morning the Risen Christ has no such qualms. He invites interaction with his scars. He uses them as evidence that it really is him, and that he is real flesh and blood. The scars witness to the experience he lived through. And maybe one point we might note is that there is no hint of shame about that. There is nothing to hide. Rather than the rather contemporary ‘nothing to see here’ narrative, we are told that there is definitely something to see here. Something that has the potential to change our understanding of the nature of God.

I’ve been wondering about our need to hide our scars, our need to present our bodies as without flaws, our need to imagine that bodies can be flawless. The scars that Jesus shared were an important part of his story. And our scars are a part of our stories.

Whatever has happened in our lives – the accidents large or trivial; the surgeries minor or significant; the interventions that may have saved our lives, they are all part of the story of our journeys through life. They help to define who we are and how we respond to whatever life throws at us. The scars are a visible sign of something much deeper, an outward sign, perhaps, of an inner reality.

And if that is true of our physical scars, how much more is it true of our psychological scars. The pain and trauma that we carry, however it was acquired, scars and marks who and how we are. If we put energy into hiding our physical scars, we put even more energy into hiding our psychological scars. We carry those pains deep within us, mostly keeping them locked away, even from ourselves.

It’s often only when something significant happens that impacts on that part of us, that we realise there is something we’re not acknowledging, something that we perhaps didn’t know needed to be looked at. We may be surprised to find ourselves discovering scars we didn’t know about, or ones we thought had healed and discover are still a wee bit itchy. And that tells us something important about the nature of healing. We imagine that something happens to us or within us and we allow time to heal – physically or psychologically – and all is well. But we actually know that not to be the case. If you have broken a bone at some time in your life, there will be triggers that just serve to remind you of that damaged bit of your skeleton. If you have visible scars, there may be times when they are irritated or more visible. Times when you are suddenly aware of them. And all of that is even more true of our internal scars. They demand attention just when we least expect it, or feel least able to deal with them. And still, we do all we can to hide them from the prying eyes of those around us. Nothing to see here.

Jesus showed off his scars because they had become a part of who he was. They helped the disciples to identify him, to be confident in their interactions with him. And, like it or not, our scars are an integral part of who we are. We hide our scars, at least in part, in an attempt to hide our vulnerabilities. We may protect our physical scars because we don’t want to be hurt in a part of our body that is already a bit weaker than other parts. More significantly perhaps we hide our psychological scars because we don’t want to be hurt again; because we don’t want other people to know some of the parts of our story that cause us to feel ashamed; because we don’t want to open the can of worms that we manage to keep so well contained. And I think we do all of that for complex reasons, one of which is that we don’t want to disrupt whatever semblance of inner peace we have managed to attain. We imagine that internal place of balance, the ability to cope day to day, is largely achieved as a result of our management of all of the stuff that we don’t look at or acknowledge. Is achieved as a result of firmly managing what is seen. And most of the time that works for most of us. And some of the time it fails for all of us.

Jesus went into the upper room where the disciples were gathered and found them to be afraid. Maybe they had good reason to be afraid. Maybe they were unsafe. Maybe their fear emerged from an assumption that history would repeat itself. That they would have bad experiences again with the religious authorities because they had lived through bad experiences with them in the past. We don’t actually know how rational their fear was. We just know that it was real for them.

And what does Jesus do? He says to them ‘peace be with you’. He doesn’t say ‘nothing to see here’. He doesn’t dismiss their fear. He says I am gifting you my peace. The peace that enables the forgiving of sins. The peace that brings change. The peace that offers healing. That was his response. He could see that they were hurting. He could see that they carried internal scarring. He knew that they were vulnerable. And he responded to that. Not in the way they may have hoped – he didn’t blandly tell them that all would be well. But he did tell them that there was the potential for all to be healed.

The First Nations bible has a wonderful translation of verse 23: if you release others from their bad hearts and broken ways, they are released. Bad hearts and broken ways are almost always a response to internalised pain. Bad hearts and broken ways bring more pain – to the perpetrator and to others. And Jesus offers release from that pain, offers the new life, the new beginnings that are at the heart of the Easter story.

None of us can journey through this life without gaining scars. Nor should we attempt to do so. Our scars teach us something about our own vulnerability. They teach us something about our inability to be in complete control. They shape us and hopefully make us more able to recognise other people’s scars, to recognise when they are acting out of their own broken ways.

We may not be ready to display our scars, but could we begin to let go of the shame we carry about them. Can we dare to admit that there is something to see here?