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Wounds show God’s presence

By the Rev. Kelley Lackey

“A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ “ (John 20:24-28)

When a catastrophe happens to us, our first impulse always seems to be to try to get back to a previous state of being.

I remember several years ago an insurance company had a commercial on television that started out by showing the ruins of a burned house. Then through reversing the film, the house’s state of being backed up until it was back to the way it was before the fire.

We almost always seem to have this impulse to want to go back when something happens that wounds us. We pray for God to fix our lives and we assume that the sure sign of God’s presence in our lives is when the damage is somehow magically reversed.

Somewhat implicit in this compulsion may be the notion that this previous state is where God is and that our wounds are actually a sign of our God forsakenness.

This assumption is far from the actual teaching of the church, and it has tragic consequences for us when we continue in such a state of mind. One of the countless ways that we see the tragedy of this assumption play out in our culture is in the lives of old people and those with disabling conditions.

Too often, when we find ourselves wounded by time or injury, we make the sad and sinful assumption that our wounded state makes us of less value and that our wounds are marks to be ashamed of, to be hidden and denied. Somehow we think that our value and sanctity are diminished because we are wounded.

I think that the story of Thomas is powerful in that it challenges us to see a part of the resurrection that we all too often skip over. It is the fact that the risen Jesus retains the wounded state of his crucifixion and it becomes a part of the glory of the resurrection.

The wounds don’t go away; Jesus isn’t restored to his previous state of being before the cross.

Rather, the marks of the spear and the nails point to something beyond what was before. They reaffirm that woundedness is not contrary to our wholeness in our lives.

They proclaim that wounds are not a sign of God’s absence but God’s very presence in our vulnerability. Indeed, they are quite oftentimes opportunities for something more.

When we ask God to take away the wounds in our lives, we must realize that we may be living into a state of denial that has nothing to do with resurrection but everything to do with our own stubborn, self-deluded egos.

Usually, when I pray for God to fix something in my life and it doesn’t happen, I become frustrated and offended by God’s apparent lack of willingness to do what I think I know is best for me. Instead of offering up my life, wounds and all, to God, I present a prayerful ultimatum that springs from my deluded ego’s need to create its own reality of what resurrection must look like.

However, if I am honest with myself, my image of resurrection is probably pretty shoddy in comparison to the one that the creator and redeemer of all has in store for me.

When we acknowledge our wounds and then offer them up to God so that God can work through them to transform us, we begin to glimpse resurrection in a new and profound way. We may begin to see that it is often in the most wounded areas of our lives that God can do the most transformative work.

That is not a resurrection that reverses the film of our lives to a time before the fire, but a resurrection that embraces and transforms our entire being into the image of the risen Christ, wounds and all.

The Rev. Kelley Lackey is rector of St. Andrew’s, Emporia, This first appeared in Crossroads, the parish’s newsletter.