Luke tells us something quite amazing in our gospel passage for today. When Jesus asks for some fish to eat the message is clear: This is the risen embodiment of God. The physical body of Jesus is very present, and eating is a way to show that what the disciples are seeing is not a ghost.
This is Jesus with them as he refers to the scars in his hands as evidence. Remember Thomas asking to touch Jesus’ side and wanting to see the nail holes in his hands? The fact that Jesus is resurrected and has maintained these physical signs of his earthly life and death means that these scars are important to God. These scars are an essential part of his witness to the disciples. These marks from the nails may have been forgiven, but not forgotten. Even the Son of God has scars. Or – especially the Son of God has scars!
Scars can be a valuable part of our story too. Usually, we hide them. The external ones and the internal ones. Maybe we carry shame, guilt, or embarrassment with our scars. Maybe we are afraid of the story about how we got them and what that brings up. Pain is often associated with our scars.
But – nothing is outside the love of God. However, like the disciples who saw – but didn’t perceive – we have barriers to our seeing and perceiving. Maybe it’s fear that blocks our belief. Maybe it’s a past trauma or series of traumas that stand before us like a wall. Still, nothing is outside the love of God.
Priest and writer Henri Nouwen’s classic book The Wounded Healer addresses how we are equipped to minister to others not because we are without wounds or scars, rather because of them, we can better understand the difficulties someone else is experiencing with greater compassion.
– That medical diagnosis you’re dealing with? – It can be part of your witness to others.
– That job change or loss? With God’s help it can be a deeper time to trust in God’s providence and expand one’s empathy for those who have been out of work too.
The brokenness we all experience, while our inclination is to sweep it under the rug, can become something that points to the healing nature of God. God is in everything, and God’s desire is for us to have healing to be restored to community and service.
From my years in Japan, I came across the amazing art form known as Kintsugi. Kin = gold and Tsugi = repair.
The practice involves taking broken pieces of a cup, a plate, or a bowl and rejoining them with a very strong gold bond. The result is that the lines and cracks are transformed from something ugly to something beautiful. Kintsugi highlights the beauty in imperfection. We can embrace what is flawed. There is strength and allure in our flaws. God’s soul-Kintsugi leaves golden trails of resilience that map and articulate our journeys. Therefore, we can love and respect our broken pieces, remembering the history attached. As Trans author Elliot Wake, formerly Leah Raeder put it, “My heart full of gold veins, instead of cracks.”
You know, we have the common saying, “And I have the scars to prove it!” That means there is a story in that related experience.
It’s interesting when examining Kintsugi, one’s focus shifts from noticing the cracks – to noticing the gold lines that have connected and repurposed the piece as a piece of artwork. It makes me wonder if for our lives, our hearts, and our faith to be beautiful, something must break. The wounds then become more than something merely to forget, they become a part of who we are – transformed by God.
Many times, a particular cup or bowl carries a story about a loved one. Grandmother’s favorite everyday coffee cup, chipped and broken, becomes a beautiful conversation piece keeping memories of her and stories shared with her alive.
Instead of throwing the broken cup away, the parts that were separated are re-paired, and re-membered. It has a new life. Its golden scars share a witness about being healed and made whole again.
Jesus was the incarnation of love on earth, thus the eating of fish with the disciples. Jesus is telling them, and us, that we too are to be present as the body of Christ in the world. We are the current day incarnation of Christ. We are tasked with living and serving as Christ served. We are Christianity – in physical form.
We are asked to remember the invitation to maintain our relationship with Christ through the physical things we can touch. We can touch scars. We remember our identity as God’s beloved forever when we touch the holy waters of baptism. We are rejoined with God and community when we touch and receive the bread and the wine. Holy Communion is about unity in the risen Christ. This Easter meal is in real time and is not for solace only, but for our strength (see Euch. Prayer C, BCP p. 369).
That’s what Jesus is doing by revealing his scars as part of his testimony to the disciples. He is asking them to remember their relationship with him and their spiritual bond to one another.
When he died, they became broken pieces, separated by the trauma and confusion of his death. So, the best way to show that his wounds didn’t have the final say was to show them his risen self while maintaining the signs, the scars from what happened.
Jesus takes our most hopeless – broken pieces to show how God’s healing power, something we can’t make ourselves, can work in our lives. Even our deepest wounds are not too deep, too wide, or too much for God’s golden salve of grace.
For instance, maybe healing for you looks like forgiving someone. Whenever we forgive, we are pouring golden salve into the broken parts of our own heart.
Our brokenness is not something to discount or discard. Our brokenness is integral to our new formation. Collected pieces of brokenness like a shattered cup or bowl, are part of the artwork for the Master. The greater focus is not necessarily on the broken pieces themselves, but on the gold – that artfully binds them together. It is to the glory of God that we are repaired and restored.
Such is the life in Christ – a series of broken parts in life – leaves us feeling doubtful. Doubting our selves, doubting God, and doubting others. We may feel at times as if we have failed, and yet the love of God brings everything together and says there is purpose, even when there seems to be no reason, there is purpose for your life. Nothing is wasted. Everything is witness.
After all, are we not, more than anything, to be what Jesus said we would be, “witnesses – to these things”?
End: (sing first stanza of Blessed Assurance)
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God
Born of his Spirit, washed in his blood
This is my story, this is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long
This is my story, this is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long
Thanks be to God. Amen.