Reading Luke Together #46 – Wounds Yet Visible
Luke 24:36b-48 feels like some scribe, fond of John’s Gospel and a tad disappointed by Luke’s version, spliced in a vignette almost identical to John 20! Suddenly Jesus appears in a room. The disciples aren’t comforted, but startled, terrified. He invites them to look at and touch his hands and feet. I love Sarah Ruden's new translation: "Look at my hands and feet, and you'll know it's me, in person. Feel me over and see, because a spirit doesn't have flesh and bones, as you can observe that I have."
It's the scars. Robert Barron, commenting in the lovely new The Word on Fire Bible: "A woundless Christ is embraced much more readily by his executioners, since he doesn't remind them of their crime." So the scars remind of the forgiveness they need (and that he gives). Barron goes on to point out the plot of history and the world: "Order, destroyed thru violence, is restored through greater violence." Jesus undermines all of this. The scars remind he's not returning a greater violence for ours.
Speaking of John: every time I work chapter 20, I go to Rachel Hollis, TV personality and author of Girl, Wash Your Face, who posted an Instagram photo of herself that went viral with this caption: “I have stretch marks and I wear a bikini… because I’m proud of this body and every mark on it… They aren’t scars, ladies, they’re stripes and you’ve earned them.” Earned scars, earned through the enfleshing of love.
I’m fond too of the insight Graham Greene shared in The End of the Affair. A woman notices what used to be a wound on her lover’s shoulder, and contemplates the advancing wrinkles in his face: “I thought of lines life had put on his face, as personal as a line of writing – I thought of a scar on his shoulder that wouldn’t have been there if once he hadn’t tried to protect another man from a falling wall. The scar was part of his character, and I knew I wanted that scar to exist through all eternity.”
The scars in Jesus’ hands and side, earned when he gave life to all of us, were not blotted out by the resurrection (John 20:27). Caravaggio painted it graphically. I love that Jesus shows up, not as powerful but as the wounded one. The wounds are his glory. What do we sing in "Crown Him with Many Crowns”? “Behold his hands and side. Those wounds, yet visible above, in beauty glorified.”
His wounds - glorified. Beauty. Jesus showed his scars. St. Francis of Assisi, who prayed to be like Christ so seriously that God actually answered his prayer by wounding his hands, feet and side, hid his wounds out of humility!
The humility of the risen Christ? He’s hungry – and they give him a piece of broiled fish. Eat some broiled fish in preparation to preach. Report on what it tasted like, and what that might have been like for Jesus, and the astounded disciples. Who could have anticipated that over time the Greek word for fish, ichthus, would become a widespread acronym for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior?
More on the fish: we have Jonah and the fish. God creating the fish. Jesus retrieving a coin from a fish’s mouth. St. Anthony of Padua, following St. Francis’s example of preaching to birds, preaching to fish, encouraging them to be grateful to God for water, gills, food, that they survived the flood in huge numbers, and found their way onto the boat of the disciples just after they saw Jesus – in John again!
And then Jesus ascends, departing from them. It’s not meant as a physical levitation up into the sky, but a spiritual homecoming for Jesus, who returns from whence he came, and where he belongs, in heaven, with his Father.
Notice 2 little details. Before leaving, Jesus redirects their attention to the Scriptures. It’s not a mystical experience that wins the day, but regular study of God’s Word. And then, once Jesus is gone, “they were continually in the temple.” Here’s the formula for sticking close to Christ: Scripture + Worship, constantly, for a lifetime.