Wounds

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

April 15, 2017

3 Easter B

          My friend Donna was the Executive Director of Project Woman, a domestic violence shelter and advocacy center in Springfield, Ohio where Don and I used to live.  When Donna began her work at Project Woman, the organization was a very small shelter that could accommodate only a few women and their children.  Donna poured her heart and her life into Project Woman, and by the time she retired some two decades later, Project Woman had a large shelter, transitional housing, crisis management, a 24 hour hotline, and was a thorn in the flesh of the Ohio state house where Donna advocated for better legal protection for victims of domestic violence.  Project Woman was not just a job for Donna.  The stories of the women she served were her own story.  Her life had not been an easy one. Divorce, disappointment, brokenness, betrayal, and despair were all part of her story and they were all part of what she poured into her work at Project Woman as she turned her own pain into someone else’s hope.  After Donna retired, her health began to fail.  She faced some very scary times and there were a few times when we wondered how much longer we would have Donna with us.  But time and again, she pulled through and she became a volunteer hospital chaplain, once again turning her own difficult experiences into someone else’s hope.

          This morning, the resurrected Jesus appears among the disciples. The story we just heard from Luke’s gospel is very similar to the story we heard last week from John’s gospel.  In both stories, the resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples, terrifying them.  This morning, the disciples believe that they are seeing a ghost, which is quite reasonable.  The last time they saw Jesus, the disciples had stood at a distance, watching as Jesus was crucified.  What could Jesus possibly be now other than a ghost?  As in John’s gospel, Jesus shows the frightened disciples his hands and his feet which still bore the marks of crucifixion.  By seeing those wounds, healed but still present, the disciples understand that Jesus is, indeed, fully alive in their midst.   

          Then, to further prove that he is not a ghost, Jesus asks for something to eat.  Up until now, Jesus is the one who has done the feeding, turning a few fish and loaves of bread into a meal for thousands.  Now, the disciples feed Jesus, serving him a piece of broiled fish, which Jesus eats in their presence.

          But recognizing the risen Christ goes even deeper than recognizing him by the wounds in his hands and feet and his ability to eat.  Jesus reminds the disciples of everything written about him in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms, which is to say the totality of scripture at that time.  Recognizing Jesus also comes from knowing the scriptures, the story of God’s saving work since creation.  For the writer of Luke’s gospel, all of scripture points to the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  When the disciples understand that, they will understand that the one they thought to be a ghost is actually the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.  The natural response to all that God has done from creation through the resurrection is to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations, beginning right where they are standing in Jerusalem.

          The stories in the law of Moses, the words of the prophets, and the poetry of the psalms point us to the Messiah.  Those stories also connect us with stories in which the wounds of a people do not have the final word and can bring hope to others.  One clear example is the command in the book of Exodus that admonishes God’s people not to mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for God’s people were mistreated and oppressed foreigners in Egypt.  God’s people were delivered from slavery in Egypt and led through the wilderness into the Promised Land, but they have never forgotten their time in slavery.   Their sense of hospitality to strangers is rooted in their experience of being strangers themselves.  God calls them to use that corporate wound to bring hope to others. 

          The Easter message, and the message to which Scripture points, is not that there are no wounds.  The Easter message is the promise that, ultimately, neither Jesus’ wounds nor our own have the final say.  When Jesus says “You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus is stating a fact, not making a request.  Jesus is telling us that our lives, our whole lives, as individuals or as families or as a church, witness to the power of resurrection.  My friend Donna used her life to show that truth to the world, using her own healed wounds to bring hope to others.  Our lives, steeped in our relationship with Jesus and our knowledge of the scriptures, continue to tell the story that wounds do not have the final word.  Jesus states as fact that we are witnesses that forgiveness triumphs over sin, love triumphs over hate, and life triumphs over death.  We are witnesses to resurrection hope.

                                                                                      Amen.