Easter 3B
April 14, 2024
Luke 24:36b-48
INTRODUCTION
Each of our readings today reflects the arc of death to life that is so central to this Easter season. Peter’s speech in Acts immediately follows a miraculous healing, in Jesus’ name, of a man who can’t walk. People are understandably amazed, and Peter responds basically, “Well duh! That’s what God can do! God brings life and wholeness!”
1 John gives a sense of how we are always moving away from sin and toward what we shall become, because we are children of God. I love to quote this first verse when I do baptisms, because that is the trajectory of our baptized life, always moving from death into life.
Today’s Gospel reading is about what happens right after the wonderful story about the Road to Emmaus. You remember that one? I’ll review it in my sermon; for now, know that this story happens Easter evening, when the only evidence of the resurrection that they have to go on is the women’s story. Now Jesus has begun appearing to people, and it is a highly emotional time. They are just starting to figure out what is happening when Jesus suddenly appears to the whole group, and that is what we will hear today.
A phrase you will hear in two of our readings today is, “You are witnesses.” A witness, of course, is someone who sees something, and tells others about it. The telling part is important, but you can’t tell something you don’t see. So as you listen, also watch – watch for ways you see Christ, see restoration and transformation, and think about where you are still seeing Christ restore and redeem in your life today. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesu Christ. Amen.
Each spring, our Dorcas Rachel Women’s Group reads a book together and discusses it. This year’s book, which we discussed this past Thursday, was called The Choice: Embrace the Possible, by Dr. Edith Eger. Dr. Eger is an Auschwitz survivor who, after the war, came as a refugee to the United States, and eventually got her doctorate and become a renowned psychologist. The memoir is a story of survival and healing – first we see the resilience to survive a death camp, then her journey toward healing and wholeness following this traumatic experience. When she is first liberated from the camp and tries to get on with her life, she does everything she can to shove away all the memories of her past that cause her such pain. She does not tell her own children that she survived Auschwitz, and gets physically ill when her young daughter discovers this on her own. She is plagued by migraines and debilitating flashbacks and panic attacks. One day a young man hands her Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, and her life changes. In reading Frankl’s own experience in death camps, she comes to realize that there is healing to be found in sharing our stories, rather than keeping them silent. As she observes later, “You can’t heal what you won’t feel.” You cannot erase the pain you have felt; you can only accept who you are and what has happened or been done to you, and then move on. She was liberated from the physical camp by a US soldier, but she was liberated from the prison she had made for herself by this realization. She then devotes her life to seeking out healing for herself and others by giving space to tell our stories, feel our emotions, and bear witness to others.
It’s a remarkable story, full of life-giving insights, and I recommend it! And, because I spent a lot of time reading it this week, I saw similar themes in today’s Gospel reading. First, recall the context of this story from Luke: this is the evening of Easter. According to Luke, the women at the tomb saw that it was empty and went to tell the disciples, most of whom dismissed their story as “an idle tale.” That was the morning. Now it is evening, and just before this, we have walked alongside two men, Cleopas and his friend, on the way to Emmaus. Jesus walks with them, but they don’t recognize him. At Jesus’ prompting, they tell him about this crazy few days they have just had – about Jesus’ ministry, his death, and his alleged resurrection, the women’s “idle tale.” In response Jesus “opens to them the holy scriptures,” and their hearts “burn within” them. They stop for a meal, and when Jesus breaks bread, voila, they suddenly recognize him! But as soon as they realize their companion’s identity, Jesus (poof) vanishes. They run back to Jerusalem to find the others, to share what they have seen, and they learn from the 11 that Peter, too, has seen the risen Lord.
Our Gospel today begins with, “While they were talking about this” – all this is what it refers to. This is the context. You can imagine the emotions are crazy right about now. Disbelief, alarm, joy, amazement, wonder – Luke names them for us. What he doesn’t name is that there is still lingering grief. These disciples have experienced a serious trauma. Watching Jesus die was certainly part of it. But also, can you imagine the regret they feel? The shame? They abandoned him! And now, if Jesus is back… will he call them out on that? Will they have to face those regrets, that guilt and shame over their actions? And what if this isn’t real – can they risk letting their hearts be hopeful, only to have them slammed again by a crushing reality? What if Jesus only came back spiritually? What if all these people only had visions of him? Can they really risk their hearts?
And into all of this mess of joy, shame, wonder, disbelief, regret, and amazement… Jesus shows up. And he doesn’t accuse, or lecture, or chastise. He offers those life-giving if also unbelievable words: “Peace be with you.” The words give a sense of health and well-being, that untroubled state of being forgiven.
I love these words, and I love how often Jesus utters them in those first post-resurrection appearances because they are an immediate salve to the pain the disciples must be feeling. But what caught my attention this week, and what made me connect it with Edith Eger’s story, is the next bit, where Jesus invites them to, “Look at my hands and feet and see that it is I myself. Touch me and see.” Touch my wounds, my scars – which are not only physical remnants of Jesus’ suffering and death, but memories of Jesus’ broken heart, and triggers of the regret and shame the disciples must feel. Touch them, he says, so that there may be no mistake that they do exist. Touch them and see; do not avoid or look away.
When Edith comes to America with her husband and daughter, she has every intention of leaving behind her old life and starting a new one. “We are American now,” she says, “and we will do as Americans do.” She closes the book on her past – on the pain of her memories, the trauma of the camp, the grief for those she has lost, the regret she has for the choices she made that she fears resulted in loss, the immense survivor’s guilt. She does not want to look at it or see it. She does not want to touch it. She wants a new life.
And yet, the irony she finds is that she cannot live fully into her new life unless she looks directly at all that stuff she had locked up and left behind. She cannot find peace as long as her pain remains hidden; she cannot find healing as long as it is ignored. She must feel the emotions – because as she says, “You can’t heal if you won’t feel.”
The rest of the book describes Dr. Eger’s journey toward becoming a psychologist, and the many people she helps to find healing. As she walks alongside her patients, she also continues her own journey of healing. In one incredibly moving encounter with a Vietnam veteran, she observes, “To heal is to cherish the wound.” To heal is to cherish the wound – not love that it happened, not continue to dwell in it or be pulled into its pain… but to see it, accept it as something that happened to you, recognize its role in making you who you are, and then move on.
I hear this and I think of Jesus, saying to his emotional disciples, “Look at my hands and my feet. Touch me and see.” Cherish this wound, and you will heal. Cherish it, and you will find life. Acknowledge what happened – the devastation it brought, the guilt, shame and regret it left behind – and see it for what it is. Touch and see. And then, then, step forward into the new life that comes as a result.
I personally have over 20 physical scars of various sizes. They are mostly from cancer-related surgeries, but also from injuries mostly from my childhood. I used to hate them, as they reminded me of some of the most challenging times of my life, times when I was broken. But over time I’ve started to cherish them, as Dr. Eger urges. I cherish them because they are reminders of my survival, of times I suffered, yes, but also lived through pain, and by God’s help I came out the other side. But my favorite marks are five small tattoos I received when I got radiation treatments as a teenager for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. They are small blue dots here…[point]. When taken together, they make the sign of the cross, a profound reminder that through all those wounds, Christ was with me, his cross marked not only invisibly on my brown, but permanently in blue ink across my heart, my core. I can (and do!) touch them, touch him, and see that he is really, truly there with me.
Even without the tattoos, of course, Christ is with you, too. In this emotionally fraught story, and in our own, he shows up – in a conversation, at a meal, in the operating room, in the lawyer’s office, at a bedside. He cares for us in our woundedness, because he is, himself, wounded. He is present for us in our regret and shame, urging us to look at the wound, to touch it, and then, having found healing, to step into new life.
Let us pray… Wounded Healer, we bear the pain and sometimes even the physical marks of our past trauma and struggles, and often would prefer not to look at it. Yet you come to us in our grief and invite us to touch and see – so that we would also see and know that you can take brokenness and turn it into new life and liberation from that which would bind us. Grant us the courage to do it! In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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