The Marks We Bear

Sermon preached Sunday, April 14, 2024, the Third Sunday of Easter, at Lutheran Church of Our Saviour in North Chesterfield, VA. 

What marks do you bear?

What physical marks are spread across your skin? Do you have a scar from falling off your bike when you were a kid? A finger that bends a little funny from when you broke it? Are your limbs marked with arthritis? Your lungs marked with respiratory illness? Your eyes marked with cataracts or slowly building blindness?

Maybe your marks are more mental or psychological. The education you received, either long ago or continuous, every day as you work or live, marks your mind. Maybe you are also marked by something more diagnosable. Maybe you are marked by clinical depression, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, or something else that requires regular therapy or medication.

And then there are the ones that are harder to pin down—the spiritual and emotional marks. The marks that can help us grow and be better people: the marks we receive from being loved and cared for and being told we are children of God. The marks that are always just a little tender or downright raw from times we may have been mistreated or abused, or when God’s words of hope were twisted into words of condemnation.

We carry these marks, all of them, throughout our lives. Some are visible, like a scar from a skinned knee, and some are not, like the hurts we carry deep in our hearts. Some go away with time, or at least fade, like a bad breakup; others won’t, like when our body slowly loses one physical function after another. And some of these marks are helpful: they can help us learn and grow and move forward. But some of these marks do nothing but destroy, if they are given free rein in us.

Today’s Gospel is about the marks that Jesus still bears. And that “still” is important. After the resurrection, Jesus Christ is not a spirit. Jesus eats: he asks for something to eat and takes the broiled fish the disciples offer. Jesus has fellowship: he sits with his disciples, teaches them, talks with them. And Jesus still bears the marks of the crucifixion: the holes in his hands and feet. This is no ghost: this is Jesus Christ, in the flesh, among them.

There is a lot of debate about what happens with our bodies when we die and what our bodies will be like when we are resurrected. We say in the Apostle’s Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body. But whose body? Christ’s body? Our bodies? Christ’s body and our bodies?

In essence, this question is: Will we still bear the marks of our lives when we are raised to new life with Christ? And the truth of the matter is, we don’t know, at least not for sure, and we won’t until Christ comes again. I have my convictions and others have theirs.

When I was living in Chicago and going to seminary, I worked as a nanny for my cousin. He and his wife lived out in the suburbs and twice a week I drove out to watch their daughter Grace and, eventually, their son Cooper when he was born the Spring before my last year. I started watching Grace when she was only about fifteen months old and loved getting to see her grow up and explore the world with the kind of curiosity it seems is reserved for those who have not yet learned all the reasons they should doubt themselves.

We talked about lots of hypothetical questions: whether dolphins went to school and who Grace would hang out with on Sesame Street. Some of Grace’s questions were pretty advanced and she stumped me, like when she wanted to know how my phone could send messages to another phone so quickly! And some questions were a mix of both: hypothetical questions that I had no hope of knowing the answer to.

Grace’s grandpa had a dog who was blind. Grace loves all animals and is always concerned about their wellbeing. So, she looked at me one day and out of the blue asked, “Do you think Ralph (the dog) will be blind in heaven? Or do you think God will make him see again?” Deep theological questions sometimes come from the most unlikely places. I didn’t—couldn’t—give her a precise answer, so I asked her what she thought and we wondered together.

The truth is, it’s not about what marks we have now or what marks we may gain in the future because God has those same marks—and not all of those marks are bad. This is a distinction we need to make. Many people who are blind do not want to be told that their vision will be restored in heaven and that they will receive a new, better body because that means that they are less-than now. The same can be said for the Deaf community who tend to see their inability to hear as a difference but certainly not something to be pitied. The same can be said for someone who is born with Down Syndrome or any other condition on a long list of things that the “normal” community sees as needed to be remedied. Certainly, these marks require different ways of interacting and accommodations, but if we believe that God bears all of our marks, then God bears these marks, too.

Disability theologians are quick to point this out. God, in taking on our flesh, takes on every aspect. God bears the same marks we do.

And the holes in the hands and feet of Jesus are physical marks that symbolize so much more that what our bodies tangibly hold. Those holes are stand-ins for the marks Jesus has taken on for our sake: the marks we carry that would separate us from God. In each of those holes, Jesus carries our inability to forgive, our greed, our lack of caring for our neighbor, the sin we live with every day.

The disciples and companions of Jesus were the first witnesses. Jesus appeared to them and offered them peace. He showed them his wounds. He ate with them. He taught them. And then they shared the Good news.

These were the first witnesses, and now it’s our turn. We are the witnesses to a savior who has taken on our marks of sin and shame and guilt. We are the witnesses to a God who has the same marks we do of blindness, Deafness, physical and emotional frailty, depression, and so much more. Whatever we bear, God bears with us. And whatever we might bear that separates us from God, God bears for us, so that we may be reconciled.

This is not a ghost; this is not a God of spirit, but of real, true, bodily flesh. In a couple of minutes you will be invited up to the table. I will take a piece of bread and offer it to you.

Take it. Eat it. It is the body of Christ, which bears all the good and bad marks of humanity, broken and given for you.

Amen.