Variety: John 20v27

The Easter Story: Hope for the Wounded

You cannot read the stories of the resurrected Jesus as accounts of life triumphing over death without contending with layers of grief, mourning, and pain. A beloved mother has lost her first-born child; students and disciples are grieving the death of a teacher, confidant, and friend. Everyone has borne witness to the excruciating pain of the cross, the consequences of daring to defy empire, and the cost of declaring Jesus as Messiah. Some believers go into hiding, and others are confused about who they should now follow.
In the chaos of this time, the risen Savior shows up again, and again, and again—not as a ghostly, ethereal being but as wounded flesh. “Look at my hands and my feet,” he says to some of the frightened folks to whom he appears. “It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39)….
How do we understand God-in-flesh, broken and vulnerable, and yet also resurrected and triumphant? How do we, like [doubting] Thomas, make meaning of Jesus with his still visible wounds? To Thomas, Jesus speaks the words, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side” (John 20:27)….
There is an intimacy to Jesus’s command to Thomas, a closeness that we cannot overlook. Christ invites him to touch the unhealed wounds—to feel the places where nails and spear had pierced his body. It is a proclamation that the physical body still matters…. Wounds, too, are a part of the divine story.
By sharing his wounds, Jesus reveals that our wounds are places for God’s healing presence and love:
This is a theology for the wounded, for those who are still healing, and even for those who aren’t quite ready for healing. The risen Savior insistently welcomes the doubting, the uncertain, and the grieving to touch and see that he is real and present and here with us. The risen Savior, who had been abandoned, denied, betrayed, and crucified, doesn’t hide his wounds or rush their healing. As wounded people encased in the frailties of human flesh, can we, too, summon enough grace and kindness to acknowledge that our own very human wounds need time to heal?…
This is an embodied theology. In these stories, the physical body and the tangible world are consistently presented as ways of intimately knowing God. Some saw and believed; others have not seen and still believed. At the center of both experiences is God-in-flesh, loving us in our own wounded places.

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