Ever since Jesus invited Thomas to touch the wounds in his hands and in his side, and Paul began to proclaim that those who die with Christ will be raised with Christ, we Christians have speculated endlessly about our own resurrection bodies. More specifically, we’ve wondered what we will look like resurrected.
Will we look like we do now, or will we be featureless beings of light, like in the 1985 movie “Cocoon”? Will we be resurrected at the same age as we are when we die? (Will there perhaps be a little less of our resurrection body than of our earthly one?) Will we recognize our loved ones who’ve gone before when we’re resurrected with Christ, and will our loved ones recognize us?
When the Christians in Corinth ask Paul questions like these, he replies, pulling no punches, “Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.” (1 Cor. 15:36-39)
And, for those who have seen or read “Project Hail Mary,” there’s another flesh altogether for astrophage!
After pointing out that “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed star differs from star in glory,” Paul concludes by saying, “So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.” (1 Cor. 15:42-44)
Twenty centuries later down the pike, it’s intriguing to see how Paul’s vision of our resurrected glory and our connectedness with Christ is enhanced (and supported) by some of the advances in various scientific disciplines in the last twenty to twenty-five years. Drawing on the known steps in the formation of our solar system as well as the incredible set of physical principles that all came together just so, so that life could be sustained on our planet; and also drawing on the discovery that the DNA in every single living organism in all of creation is made of exactly the same ingredients and speaks exactly the same language, with the only difference being the order the particular genetic words are in, Christian geneticist Francis Collins has written, “Nearly all of the atoms in [our] bod[ies] were once cooked in the nuclear furnace of an ancient supernova – [we] are truly made of stardust.” (The Language of God, p. 68)
St. Paul and Dr. Collins notwithstanding, however, the final answer to our questions about what our resurrection bodies will be like is the same now as it was back in the first century: we don’t know. We don’t know what our resurrection bodies will be like because our only experience with the resurrection of any body is the resurrection of Jesus’ body.
It doesn’t help our confusion that each of the Gospel writers treats Jesus’ own physical expression, as well as his appearances to others after his resurrection, differently. Mark, of course, says nothing, because his Gospel ends with the women running away from the empty tomb in fear, themselves saying nothing to anyone. In Matthew’s Gospel, the resurrected Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” when they come to prepare his body for burial, and we’re told that the women are allowed to “take hold of” his feet as they worship him, which certainly indicates a tangible reality.
Luke in his Gospel also stresses the tangible and physical nature of Jesus’ resurrected body, but he adds something else: in Luke’s account, as Jesus shows himself to his followers, he invites them to touch him, and he specifically asks them to take a look at his hands and his feet.
This emphasis on Jesus’ hands and feet, on the wounds from the nails as well as from the sword thrust in his side, this emphasis comes to a head here in today’s passage from John. Ironically, in spite of Mary Magdalene’s news that she has already “seen the Lord” in the garden outside his tomb, and in spite of Jesus’ appearance among them even with the door locked, it’s not the sight of Jesus himself that reassures the disciples. John is very clear that it’s the sight of Jesus’ wounds that dispels their fear. It’s the wounds themselves that convince the disciples that he’s real. “Then,” John writes, after Jesus has shown everyone his hands and his side, “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”
And, of course, it’s those same wounds, those same gaping wounds of crucifixion that Thomas wants to see and wants to touch before he himself will consent to believe.
That Jesus’ wounds are permanent realities in his resurrected body is supported both by the Gospels and by Christian art through the centuries. Any authentic representation of the Risen Lord must show the marks of the nails in his hands and his feet and, usually by implication, the sword wound in his side as well. Granted, the degree to which the graphic nature of the wounds is depicted varies widely from culture to culture and from Christian denomination to Christian denomination, but even so, the wounds remain.
As one writer has said, “[Jesus’ wounds] proclaim his boundless love for his own (Jn. 13:1). Because they declare his obedience to the Father and his scorn for the evil one, they are his marks of victory forever.” (Smith, p. 25)
They are his marks of victory forever.
Even so, with all this being said, we still don’t really know what our own resurrection bodies are going to be like!
But…consider this – a story I’ve told many times before, but I don’t think here at St. Matthias. Some years ago, Jim Wallis, the founder of the Sojourners organization wrote a magazine article in which he talked about the impact a visiting Christian speaker had had on him when he was back in high school. According to Wallis, the speaker came to the podium, looked around the auditorium, zeroed in on the first of several unsuspecting students, one of whom was Wallis himself, and pointing his finger at each of them in turn, boomed out again and again, “YOU…are the only Jesus someone will see!”
You…are the only Jesus someone will see.
In line with both the speaker’s assertion and today’s Collect that the followers of Jesus, those who have been “reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body,” ARE the ones who show Jesus to the world, let me say this as well: WE are the only Resurrection someone will see.
We don’t need to wonder about our resurrection body; we ARE the Resurrection Body.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written, “The believing community manifests the risen Christ: it does not simply talk about him, or even celebrate him. It is the place where he is shown.” (Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel)
Another pastor has said, “Jesus is not satisfied to come and die with us. He defeats death, walks out of the tomb, and drags us out with him.” (William Sappenfield, LP, “Resurrection,” 8)
We are not just the Body of Christ in the world, we are the Resurrection Body of Christ; we ARE, all of us, living evidence of God’s glory and of God’s power at work transforming the world. Jesus has dragged us out of the tomb with him, and now our life is in him; but to fully understand this, we need to talk about his wounds again.
One of the stumbling blocks, one of the scandals of the faith, for early believers was accepting that the humiliation, the pain, and the human cruelty inherent in Jesus’ death on the cross were inseparably entwined with his resurrection glory and couldn’t be set aside. One of the stumbling blocks was accepting that this human messiness is now, through the cross, part of who God IS. The wounds of the risen Christ are the marks of hatred experienced; of pain felt; of tears shed; of injustice, and of oppression, and of death – just like the wounds that we ourselves bear.
We too, for better or for worse, carry in our bodies and in our spirits the marks of hatred experienced, and of hatred expressed; the marks of pain felt, and of pain inflicted; the marks of tears shed, and of tears caused. We too have suffered injustice, been oppressed, and have died to hope – and we too have been unjust to our neighbors; we too have oppressed brothers and sisters; and we too have killed off the hope of others.
Thank God for Easter!
Easter and the resurrection of Jesus turn all of this shameful, painful human messiness upside down. In the resurrection, Jesus’ wounds are transformed, to the glory of God; and our wounds, our wounds which are so NOT the glory of God; in the resurrection our wounds are transformed as well, transformed like his into marks of victory over death and over fear and over despair.
A side note about Thomas, and about John’s Gospel: in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, individual miracles are primarily recognized and experienced by people who already have faith. Think of the healing miracles where Jesus says to the one who is newly healed, “Your faith has made you well.”
John is different. What the other three Gospels call “miracles,” John calls “signs,” and in John, signs do two things: first, rather than only being available to those who already have faith, in John signs LEAD people to faith, they BRING people to faith; and then, not only do they bring people to faith, signs also point to a greater truth, a truth beyond the signs themselves.
When Thomas, who in his anger and in his pain has chosen to be apistos, or one without faith; when Thomas is shown the sign of the wounds in Jesus’ resurrected body, he tells us exactly what he sees: he sees beyond the wounds themselves to the greater truth of the fullness and the glory and the love of God that the wounds reveal; and he responds with the most powerful and most complete confession of faith that is found in all of John: “My Lord and my God!”
No less than the glorious and transformed wounds of Jesus, in the resurrection our own wounds are taken up into the being of God, because in God, nothing is wasted – not even our pain. In the power of the Spirit which Jesus breathed on the disciples, in the power of the Spirit which will be poured out at Pentecost, in the power of the Spirit which empowers each of us for ministry, we and our wounds are transformed in the Resurrection Body, consecrated by God for God’s purposes. We and our wounds are consecrated by God to be signs for others, signs of prayer and of compassion; signs of justice, and of service. We and our wounds are consecrated by God to BE God’s Love at work in this hurting world.
In his 1888 poem “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection,” Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:
“In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am at once what Christ is, since he was what I am,
and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.”
With our wounds, through our wounds, and through the transforming wounds of Christ, we are stardust; we are immortal diamond; we are the Resurrection Body; and in the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we can, and we must, be Resurrection and new life – Resurrection and new life for the ultimate healing of the world.
Amen.
Alleluia!