scars

"Why are you so troubled, and why do doubts raise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet." ~Luke 24:38 - 41

Upon hearing reports of people seeing the risen Jesus, Thomas replied: "'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.' A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you!' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.' Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God!'" ~John 20:25b - 28

We are a doubting people. We crave scientific proof, evidence which we can see/touch/feel/hear/taste. We want whatever it is we believe in to have some sort of sensory certainty. Jesus knew this about us and that drive was amply demonstrated in Thomas. As a side note, I think Thomas often gets a bad rap. I don't see anything negative in his insistence on touching and seeing Jesus for Himself--we should all be that passionate and insistent about meeting Jesus personally, not simply through the eyes of others. But I digress.

Jesus' scars proved that He was the risen Lord, not some desperate imposter who was posing as Jesus to make people believe the prophesies had been fulfilled. The scars of the Cross are specific, unique, distinctive, and fatal. There is no denying the signs of hanging from a cross, and there is no way of surviving the cross. Jesus is infinite, but his physical body was not. His body was not perfected at that time, even though he had conquered death. Those scars were not the scars of a survivor, they were the scars of a Conqueror. They are the scars of Someone who had been put to death but had not surrendered to death.

I love that Jesus had scars. And the thing is, we all have scars. All of us Christians who have been brought into new life still bear the scars of our past sins, behaviors, pain, wounds, addictions. And the fact of the matter is, we continue to wound ourselves with our sins even after being saved, and Jesus continues to heal us. But we are finite, and the healing often comes with a beautiful, distinctive "scar" that proves God has done a work in us that we couldn't do to ourselves. Because we are healed from that sin and pain, sometimes our scars are the only things that demonstrate and "prove" the work that God has done in us. They are the only proof of the saving grace of our Lord. They are the only proof that our God is one Who can and does restore the broken into rich, redeemed wholeness.

But we are strangely reluctant to show our scars. We only want people to see our wholeness and we only want to tell people about our scars. "Oh, I used to be a slave to sin, but thankfully Jesus saved me from all that. But don't touch specific areas of my life. Jesus redeemed it. That's all you need to know."

Obviously we shouldn't tell just anyone about our past pain and failures. There are safe people and unsafe people, and it's important for our own well-being to be aware of who falls into which category and keep that line drawn. But sometimes someone needs to touch and feel those scars in order to believe that that healing is even possible. They need to see for themselves the effects of the nails, the devastation of the sword. And we, in turn, then have to relive the pain and humiliation of death on the cross.

Take me, for instance. When I was at Purdue I was going through such pain, darkness, and desperation that I cut myself. I only did it a couple times, and only on the most surface of levels (think wussy paper cut) but that's the depth to which I had fallen. I'm embarrassed by that fact, especially because I don't know how to understand it in my own life. I wish I had a way to present it to show that Jesus redeemed that area into something beautiful, but I don't even have that right now. I don't even have an answer for how I thought it would help. I do know that He saved me from that particular desperation. I do know that He healed that part of me and that He brought me into one of the most loving, grace-filled, beautiful times of my life with the Wilsons. Sure, right now things are all wobbly again, but I hope that when this is over I can show these new scars and let them tell the story of my redemption better than any blog entry could.