Show Me Your Scars

Sermon

“Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”

In high school, I had a teacher who had the scars of a severe burn on his face since his own childhood. A huge visible red area. Every time he walked in the room, that was the first thing you would notice about him.

I’ll never forget, the first class I had with him, he started off class saying, “Yes, I know what you’re all looking at.” He explained what happened, and he said, “I carry this with me, and I am who I am now.” Then he would move on.

He ended up being one of my favorite teachers, down to earth, with a lot of wisdom, and not surprisingly a lot of resilience. I wonder what it was like to carry this very visible burn on his face all the time, THE thing people see. Every class. Every new boss you talk to. Every date you have. It must be a vulnerable thing to just have to carry and have people gaze.

I wonder if it was a vulnerable act for Jesus to show his hands and his sides. Did he feel exposed when he did it? Was it embarrassing, weird? Uncomfortable?

We don’t always think of it that way in this story, of course, because Jesus showing his scars serves another purpose. This action becomes the evidence that Jesus is alive, it becomes the reason to believe. It’s the first thing he does after he declares “peace be with you,” first with the group of disciples, then with Thomas.

Think about that. Jesus showing his scars is his evidence that says: this is who I am, that I am the resurrection and the light, that hope diminished can be alive again. That yes, I am the Jesus you saw the empire try to crucify, that REALLY happened… and yet look where I am now.

Maybe that’s what gave my high school teacher courage to bear the highly visible burn on his face. Maybe he owned that his scars showed, this is what I’ve been through. And now I’m here.

“Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”

What scars do you carry?

Some of you carry literal physical scars that tell many stories. From surgeries after health scares, from accidents, from fights, from falls, from pregnancies that form new life, from incidents escaping near death.

All of us, in some way or another, carry emotional and mental scars of something we’ve been through. Hurts that people have inflicted on us. Family trauma. Spiritual wrestling. Breakups. Divorce. Grief. Job loss. Oppression.

And yet here you are, somehow on the other side. Yes, maybe you carry those scars, maybe for some of you those scars are visible for everyone to see. And yet the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead has brought you here, wounds and all.

What would it look like to own that part of your story? What if faith is to see the pierced sides of the risen Jesus and recognize our own scars? Faith not that things will just magically work out or that things will go the way we want them to go, but that God is with us, in us, and for us, bearing witness to our scars as we move forward.

To see our scars in Jesus is also a challenge. After all, a recognition that the Way of Love that Christ offers to us can end up bearing wounds.

Also, to gaze at the scars of Jesus brings us to a reckoning. It calls us to ask, well, who wounded Jesus?

The disciples had to look at Jesus’ hands and side and then be confronted with the fact that they were not at his side at Jesus’ moment in need. The gospels depict the disciples, notably the men disciples, lacking courage, running away. Peter, the supposed “Rock,” even denies that he knows Jesus!

Whose scars we’ve helped inflict do we not want to gaze at? Denial is a tempting coping mechanism, so we don’t have to deal with our own part of hurting someone or feelings of guilt. I’m a good person, I wouldn’t do that.

Except then there’s no taking responsibility, which then prevents healing or the possibility of reconciliation.

Whom have we hurt that we don’t want to accept?

And when you look at Jesus’ wounds, what do you see but the result of religious authorities who were supposed to speak for God and the government authorities who were supposed to implement justice all succumb to the forces of empire and violence and oppression. And the disciples being complicit in all of that.

Why do you think people are banning books right now? Why do you think they don’t want to teach American history of racism and oppression? Why do you think it is a staple of white supremacy culture, a culture that affects all of us, to get tense when you upset politeness or avoid conflict, especially when a racialized situation comes up? We don’t want to look at the wounds we’ve inflicted! To gaze at these scars is to recognize whom America has crucified.

And what’s deeply upsetting to the narrative of America is not just to look at the wounds we’ve inflicted, but for the oppressed to bear our scars and come out the other side. To still have joy and resilience. Because you couldn’t erase us just like you couldn’t erase Jesus.

“Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”

Music observers and critics all generally agree that one of the greatest albums in the past decade is Lemonade by Beyoncé Knowles. It is so acclaimed that even when the Grammy for album of the year went to Adele for 25, Adele dedicated her acceptance speech to Lemonade.

Lemonade is a masterpiece in that it took what was essentially tabloid fodder—reported infidelity by Beyoncé’s husband Shawn Carter, aka hip-hop legend Jay-Z—and turned it into a meditation on relationships, on the larger struggle of Black women and Black men and layers of oppression, and on the cycle of grief, anger, and the possibilities of reconciliation—particularly in the brilliant visuals that accompanied the album.

The emotional climax is the song, “Sandcastles,” a piano ballad that comes after a series of songs that express Beyoncé’s shock and fierce anger and self-guilt at her husband cheating on her. Beyoncé sings how their relationship was built on sandcastles that wash away, that Beyoncé made the hypermasculine Jay-Z cry when she initially left, and she depicts dishes smashed on the counter in argument. And then, after all of that, Beyoncé makes a choice. A choice she was not obligated to make but does so out of love. She sings to the husband that hurt her, “Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”

Do you know what it’s like to say that to someone? Do you know what it’s like to receive that from someone?

Both actions leave you vulnerable. Vulnerable to being hurt. Vulnerable to being exposed. But no real relationship can survive without the willingness to show our scars.

In the Bible story, you don’t get to the Spirit of forgiveness breathed onto the disciples until after Jesus shows his scars. Are we ready to show our scars to God, which means showing them to ourselves?

The act of embracing your own scars and what you’ve gone through is a sacred act. The act of looking at the scars of the other and how you played a part in someone else’s wound is also a sacred act.

What is unveiled in the Christ who showed the disciples his hands and side? A God who says to each and every one of us: “Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”

This is the Love and Grace of God for us. “Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”

This is the Love and Grace we can show one another in relationship. “Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”

This is the Love and Grace required for us to receive if we are to ever bridge the divisions created by empire—by white supremacy and patriarchy and colonization. “Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”

“Show me your scars, and I won’t walk away.”