Easter 2.
John 20.19-31
Conquering with brokenness.
What is it about hands? They crop up quite a bit in the good book. Pilate washes his hands before sending Jesus on his way to death. Jesus places his hands on little children and the sick. The laying on of hands confers the Holy Spirit and authority in the early church.
Our Lord has his hands pierced and then will show them to his disciples. So hands are important. The Risen Master shows his hands off for two reasons. First, they are exhibit A as proof of his identity. It really is me chaps. Secondly, they are proof that the crucifixion really did happen. The crucifixion was an actual event, complete with nails and wood, gristle and blood.
Jesus' hands and more specifically his wounds will say what words cannot. No promises from his colleagues could dispel Thomas's doubt, but the wounds sure do.
And so there is the invitation.
Jesus offers exactly the proof that Thomas has requested.
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails”
Its almost as if Jesus is saying. Very well Thomas. If that is what it will take, then I gladly offer you my pierced hands. Do precisely as you have asked. Touch and see.
I wonder what we would ask for as our exhibit A? Or if we are bluntly honest what is it that we have asked for in the past? What are we asking for today? What is it that we will ask for next week?
It is sorely tempting to ask for the big-ticket stuff or what we want or we need, A B C Q and Z.
But whatever we might ask for … dazzle-dazzle and miracles, Our Lord will always offer something else entirely… brokenness. Broken hands, broken feet, a pierced side. Broken bread and poured-out wine. And so the resurrected and pierced Messiah is what we hold out to the world. We hold out and offer… HIM. One who always invites, but never stomps his foot and claims ‘You must’. For faith and love are not manufactured or coerced. They cannot be compelled or engineered. They cannot be purchased with a bit of plastic, or after pay or through a mortgage broker. They are priceless and spring forth from that place within the deep soil of our soul. They find outward expression in His hands, his body, his blood, his side
And it is not just a physical invitation to touch and see for Thomas. This invitation, this scandalous and outrageous dare, is for all people individually and it is for all humanity collectively. We have done our worst, humanity has done its most grizzly and appalling and continues to do its macabre best and in the face of our fear of each other, our fear of Him and fear of ourselves, He still calls us to see and to touch.
Everything that is mushed about us, He heals and makes whole. He does this by the gore of his own hands. If we can embrace and touch his broken hands with our own distorted and twisted hands, then like the man with the withered hand in the synagogue, we might also reach out in our responsiveness. We do so not really knowing what will happen or why. In our reaching out we will, no matter how tentative, how precarious, how nervous, or confused we might be, our crinkles and warts, all that is not quite right, will be made fresh and clean and beautiful; We become who we were meant to be, who we always were from the beginning and who will always be.
‘Put your finger and see my hands.’
It is an uncomfortably intimate invitation. One hand touching another. The action of lovers.
It is also confronting for the Master asks us to not only acknowledge what we have done but to physically touch His wounds and to feel the damage that we have done. And if we can do that; acknowledging how we have damaged others and damaged ourselves, then and only then, can our own healing begin.
But there was something else that happened in that locked room between Thomas and the Master.
After this encounter, Thomas would have been different. He would have been changed, transformed. He could not un-hear Our Lord's words. He could not un-see the wounds, the place where the nails were driven through. The gash where the sword pierced. The illness of Thomas’ doubts is banished not by eloquent argument, or by a vote by his colleagues, or by them physically giving him a caning until he comes round to their way of thinking. Nor was his change of belief transactional. No one said…”Look, Thomas, would a couple of hundred denarius sort this out for you?” The only way fear doubt and wounds are conquered is by holding onto the wounded in our world and holding onto Him.
Which does, of course, open up all sorts of dimensions when you come and open up your hands to receive Him and touch Him at the altar. And just as surely as Thomas was invited .. so too you are invited.. with Thomas and the 12, with those gathered around you today… to touch again ‘The body of Christ.’.