April 18, 2021
/The Third Sunday of Easter
1 John 3:1-7 | Psalm 4 | Luke 24:36b-48
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus spends a good amount of time showing his disciples that he’s not a ghost but is actually a real person - in the flesh! Important to this Jesus offers his hands and his feet to his disciples; he shows them the wounds of the cross which remain after his resurrection. It is those wounds which prove that he really is alive. Christian art since the very beginning has followed the witness of Scripture and almost always portrays the risen Jesus with the marks of his crucifixion. The calling card of the Risen Lord, we can say, is the marks of his death.
The fact that the Risen Lord keeps the wound in his side and the nail marks in his hands and feet tells us a lot about what resurrection isn’t and what it is. Resurrection isn’t erasure. The Risen Jesus isn’t washed of the marks of his crucifixion; he bears them in his resurrected body and will bear them for all time. The resurrection doesn’t undo the past, it transforms it – hallowing it, sanctifying it, redeeming it. The wounds of death are now signs of life, evidence not of death’s power to end, but of the depths to which God’s love will go for us.
1 John tells us that we have become children of God, adopted by him. We have been joined not into our own relationship with God, but Jesus’. We stand where Jesus stands, sharing his relationship with the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. Because we have been adopted by God, made a part of Jesus, so the author of 1 John says, at our resurrection we will be like Jesus. God has adopted us, and God will give to us the same resurrection which he has given our Lord. So too, our wounds, our scars will not be erased, but they will be transformed. We will not bear them as signs of sin’s power or death’s touch, but as tokens of God’s incredible power to turn all things to good.
This isn’t the same thing as saying, “everything happens for a reason,” or “God’s got a plan.” In a world of sin and evil not everything happens for a reason – sometimes evil and sin just happen. Horrors are committed, hurts inflicted. God does have a plan, but that plan doesn’t mean that everything that happens to us or our world is God’s will. To know God’s will, we must look at Scripture – and from beginning to end God’s will is for life! For our flourishing and our joy! God’s plan in the face of a world of sin and evil is resurrection – God will, in some way, take everything that has happened to us, take all our scars and marks, and knit them into new life.
I don’t quite know how that will work. There are some things in our individual pasts and in our collective, communal pasts that are just evil, that are reprehensible, where no good can be found. Luckily none of us have to know exactly what our future will look like, we are simply called to trust that we will be like Jesus, with even our past resurrected! The good news of the resurrection, in part at least, is the good news that nothing is lost to God. Nothing is left out of the realm of God’s redeeming, resurrecting power.
The other bit of good news of the resurrection is that we don’t have to wait until our deaths to begin living in its power. Jesus appears among his disciples and shares his life with them, he offers them his peace, and he continues to share his life and peace with us today. In our baptism we are baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection, in the Eucharist we are fed the very life of Jesus, equipped by God’s grace to live the resurrected life now! We are invited today and every day to wade deeper into the life which God has given us through his Son. That’s why we gather for worship – to become a people who live not as people bound for death, but as people who have been given new life! Slowly but surely even now, on this side of death, we can begin to see the way in which God’s Spirit touches our pain, our wounds, our sin. Slowly but surely, we can begin to see little moments when resurrection bubbles up in our life, transforming our shames, our hurt into tokens of God’s redeeming power.
As we share in communion in the next few minutes, may we all receive it not just as a religious rite, but as gift of God’s transforming power. May we share in the body of Christ and be empowered to be just a little more like him. May we accept the presence of the wounded and resurrected Jesus in the Eucharist, and in turn offer him our own wounds to be touched, healed, and filled with his resurrected life. Amen.