Easter 2, 27 April
Readings: Acts 5.27-32; Rev. 1.4-8; Jn. 20.19-31
Theme: The Marks of Jesus
As we journey through Easter the readings introduce us to different aspects of the resurrection of Jesus. Today we are invited to reflect on the fact that the risen Jesus has the marks of the nails in his hands and in his side. We are told this two times. The first time, Jesus appears in the locked house and greets the disciples with the greeting ‘Peace be with you’. After he says this, he shows the disciples assembled in the house his hands and his side. At this, we are told, the disciples rejoiced because it enabled them to recognize the Lord. Once this recognition has happened, Jesus commissions them to forgive sins by breathing on them as a gesture of receiving the Holy Spirit. So, we have a three-fold structure in this resurrection scene of Jesus: an appearance, a recognition and a commissioning. The marks on the body of Jesus allow the disciples to recognize Jesus and to know that he is risen.
However, one of the twelve, Thomas who was known as the Twin, was not present at the occasion of this appearance of Jesus in the locked house. So, the disciples tell him what has happened but he is not buying it. The death of Jesus is where he has finished his story and the message given to him by the other apostles is not enough for him to change this story. But he does lay down a condition for his possible belief. If he can see the marks on the body of Jesus, he will change his story, he will believe.
The passage takes up this challenge of Thomas in the remaining part of the passage. A week later the disciples are again in the locked house and Jesus appears to them again. But this time, Thomas is with them and he will be the focus of attention in the rest of the passage. Taking up the challenge of Thomas, Jesus tells him to ‘put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’. Thomas’s response is immediate: ‘My Lord and my God’. This is enough for him to change his story about Jesus; to realize that his death on the cross was not the end of the story.
This episode is by any standard a very strange encounter and in it the marks on the body of Jesus play the decisive role in communicating the core message. What is it about the marks of Jesus that are so central to this aspect of the resurrection? The marks on the body of Jesus signify a certain continuity in what is clearly a radical rupture with what had gone on before. The Jesus pre-resurrection was a man that all the disciples had known. They had eaten with him, seen him perform miracles and journeyed with him throughout Judea listening to his preaching and teaching. They had also witnessed the events that had just taken place in Jerusalem as he was put to death. The marks on the body of Jesus signify this continuity between the Jesus that the disciples had known in all of these pre-resurrection ways and the way that he is now making himself known to them through these resurrection appearances.
The marks on the body of Jesus signify a certain bridging concept between the pre- and the post-resurrection Jesus. They indicate that this person standing before them in the locked house is the same Jesus with whom they have journeyed over the three years prior to his death. That these marks are also on the resurrected body should make up pause for thought. The resurrection is not simply a wiping away of the traces of life as we know it on earth in our bodies. No, our bodies express our identity which is both continued in the resurrection and transformed into the glorious body which awaits us in the New Creation. We are recognizable by our bodies and it is these same bodies which will be resurrected by the Lord when he returns in all his glory at the end of time.
The lesson for us to learn from this reflection on the marks of Jesus is that our heavenly existence is not simply a wiping away of our earthly existence. Rather, it is a transformation of our earthly bodies into the glorious body of the Lord’s resurrected body. Just as, here and now in time and space, we are the body of Christ as church, so too when we are resurrected with him, we shall partake of his glorious body in heaven for all eternity. Heaven and earth are thus intermingled in this story of the resurrection through the signs of the marks on the body of Jesus. The earthly signs of Jesus’s suffering and death are a reminder to us of this fact.
This means for us that our earthly lives will be transformed and not annulled. History matters and it is taken up into eternity through the resurrection of Jesus. Who we are and what we have become in life partakes of the life of the New Creation both now and in eternity. The continuity amidst this radical rupture is shown by the marks on our bodies of the wounds of Jesus.
As church here and now, as the body of Christ present in time and space, we are born through the marks of Jesus which represent for us the redemption of the New Israel which is inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Jesus. The church is born when it recognizes the Lord in all the forms of his resurrected appearance to us and this recognition, as in our gospel story today, is followed by the commissioning to go out and to forgive sins, to heal the broken hearted and to share in the redemptive work of the body of Christ on earth. The marks on the body of the resurrected Christ are the signs that the one who has come to us from the Father is truly the Messiah, the Son of God, who gives us life in his name to be shared with others as we partake in the redemptive mission of Christ.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.