“On Touching Scars”
The Reverend Tom Steffen
11 April 2010
Text: John 20:19-31

In pulpits quite literally around the world, attempts will be made to restore the name of one of the most remembered disciples of Jesus. I am speaking, of course, of Thomas. I don’t know much about the process of elimination that was executed when Sherwood Forest was discarded and St. Peter’s was selected, but Peter is for most people a very worthy candidate. Peter is remembered for his leadership and his ability to speak boldly. Okay, he was complicated; he seems to be rather impulsive, but he is a champion, held in high esteem for most of us.

Now I doubt that there are churches named after Judas, but there’s an obvious reason for that. But there are plenty of places named for the memory of James and John. They were the “Sons of Thunder,” you may remember, and both are beloved and remembered throughout Christian history as worthy examples. But when we get to Thomas, the disciple featured in today’s Gospel reading, well he has always been associated with doubt. We don’t know much about Thomas. The first memorable episodes in his life, involve not his doubt but his boldness. When Jesus said He would go to Jerusalem and likely get crossed-ways with the religious authorities, Thomas says: “If you go, we should all go, even if it means death!” And the second most memorable event has Thomas boldly stating that Jesus was the Christ. And surely more than one preacher on this Sunday will remind her congregation that the infamous nickname “Doubter” is grounded in the same episode in which Thomas reverently says: “My Lord, and my God.”

It is well to remember that Jesus does not scold Thomas for doubting. Too often doubt is equated with disbelief that results in inaction. But doubt is not the enemy of belief. The opposite of faith is not doubt but fear. Wasn’t it Alfred Lloyd Tennyson who said: “There lives more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds!” And he’s right, I think. You can be a disciple of the Christ and pray “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief,” as did the first followers of Jesus. So if doubt isn’t the issue, what is? Well, let me suggest that we take a look at the very thing Jesus instructed Thomas to do: “Look at my scars. Put your finger in my side.”

James Harnish, pastor of Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa, Florida, recently wrote that when he was a child growing up in the 1950’s, he wished that Jesus would have been a kind of divine Superman, you know “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than an locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” Harnish imagined in his young heart that Jesus was like that “strange visitor from a distant planet with power and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, who, disguised like Clark Kent or some other first century carpenter, fights the never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.” For the young at heart of today’s 3-D world, I suspect a better image would be that of a divine avatar who enters another world to save its inhabitants from destruction.

On this second Sunday of Easter, let’s take a minute and check in with the images that inform and actually shape our deepest beliefs and hopes. Long before we find words, we have pictures in our head. And the picture we find in today’s Gospel reading is a strange visitor who is recognized by His scars. By His scars, we will know Him, and all the white lilies don’t seem to erase the scars. Touch my scars. The scars. The scars.

In a paraphrase of Hebrews, Chapter 4, Verse 15, J.B. Phillips gives us pause: “We have no superhuman High Priest to whom our weaknesses are unintelligible – He Himself has shared fully in all our experience.” The high priest, however, Jesus, the Christ, with His post resurrection scars is enough. Knowing the Crucified One was and is enough to awaken us. Those shocking scars that stunned Thomas were able to move him to overcome his doubt and, more importantly, his fear. And low and behold, his courage was awakened. And God willing, that shock will be enough for us, for us who have not seen. The scars.

In his book Subversive Spirituality, Eugene Peterson says the wounds are meant to be “a listening post, a chance to exit the small confines of a self-defined world and enter the spaciousness of a God-defined world.” It is a God-defined world that I want to live in, and I suspect you do as well.

The name of Charles Spurgeon will be known to some of you here. He was the Baptist pulpit giant of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Spurgeon writes of going to live in Newcastle, England, which at that time was a very dirty industrial town. As he was looking around the house that he was thinking about renting, the landlord took him to the uppermost room and took him over to a window. “There,” he said as he pointed out the window, “over there you can see Durham Cathedral on a Sunday.” Spurgeon supposedly questioned: “Sunday?”… Why on a Sunday?” “Because,” said the landlord, “because the furnaces are not working on Sunday and there is no smoke in the sky. When the smoke clears, you can therefore see farther.”

On any given Sunday in Bellevue, we may not be able to see farther, but we can see further, further into the mystery that God is. When the fog clears and the light shines, we can make out the scars of the One who loves us to the uttermost. No longer in half light, we see in the light of resurrection, and we see the very heart of God.

I dedicate this sermon to my wife, Juli, who is teaching me that scars are our best teachers.

I am grateful to Reva Allington, friend and member of St. Peter’s UMC, who edits my sermons.