Saint Paul and The Reformation
April 16th, 2023
John 20:19-31
9When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26A 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.” 27Then 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.” 28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
It Happens
Pray with me:
Holy One,
Come into the locked doors of our hearts today
Come bearing your scars
Come breathing your resurrection
That we may be made new.
Amen.
Greetings, Beloveds!
My name is Pastor Tim Brown, and I’m the Director for Congregational Stewardship for the ELCA. On behalf of Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton I bring you greetings of peace and joy, and am grateful to be here at Saint Paul and the Reformation.
I live just down the road from you all in Raleigh, North Carolina, with my wife and two young boys. I thank Pr. Shebeck for the invitation this morning, as Patrick and I are longtime friends from when we were young and full of dreams back in seminary, and because I happened to be in Minneapolis on business he was like, “Hey, the Sunday after Easter would be a nice time to not preach…”
So here I am. Really delighted to be here with you…
Not to bore you with my hobbies or the details of my life, but I’m a little bit quirky in that I have a real interest and affinity for the saints of the church, both official and unofficial. You no doubt know some of the most popular: Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Julian of Norwich, Saint Catherine, Saint Paul.
The Roman and Orthodox branches have lots of hoops you have to jump through posthumously to be canonized as a saint, but Lutherans? We’re a little more “go with the flow” on it all. Everyone who dies in the church can be known as a saint for us, quirks and all.
Which means that we end up with our own Blessed Martin Luther as Saint Martin (remembered on February 18th), and his wife Saint Kadi (remembered on December 20th), and in my estimation we can include Saint Marsha P. Johnson, a trans activist and practicing Catholic who is remembered on March 31st, and even Saint Freddie of the Mercuries (September 5th)…though that last one is certainly controversial as it’s unclear if he was Christian, though any choir would certainly be enhanced by his vocals. The man was born to sing.
This last Thursday, though, April 14th the Roman, Lutheran, and Anglican churches remember a saint who died too young, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the first First Nations Saint canonized by Pope John Paul II back in 1980. Saint Kateri, or as she’s more widely known, Lily of the Mohawks, had a rough childhood and due to a smallpox epidemic brought by the settlers in her land, had severe scarring all over her face. She died at age 24, far too young, and she was wise and faithful and kind and bore the violence of the land on her body.
Scars.
My eldest son, Finn, has this nice scar right on his back. He got it while playing on a playground in the small town of Woden, Iowa, population around 93 souls (it swells when my family comes to visit). It’s one of those old playgrounds that no longer would pass safety codes, with a merry-go-round that you can twirl so fast you’ll lose your lunch, a wooden bridge that is termites holding hands, a metal slide that at the right angle will cut your thigh and at the right temperature will burn your bottom and at the right trajectory will fling you into the corn fields.
He got the scar climbing through a cement tunnel, trying to emerge too early and slicing his back.
A few years ago I saw him at the beach and ran my finger over the scar on his spine. “You still have a scar here, buddy!” I said, kind of surprised.
“It happens,” was his reply.
It happens. Scars happen as life happens.
I remember first scarring my body intentionally, coming home with a tattoo from college. My grandmother, Saint Ladye of the Browns (literally, her first name was Ladye) was sitting at our kitchen table with a cigarette in one hand a bourbon in the other. A double bourbon, mind you. She had to make them doubles, she said, because she could no longer taste the bourbon if it was just a single. “The doctor,” she said, “he prescribed me Claritin and it destroyed my taste buds.” “It’s not because you’ve been smoking since you were 16, is it grandma?” I asked.
She took a drag.
“No,” she said blowing the smoke in my face. “It’s not.”
But anyway, there she was sitting at the table, double bourbon in one hand and cigarette in another and I say, “Grandma! I got a tattoo. Want to see it?”
And she takes a drag and says, “I don’t know why anyone would do that to their body…”
The height of irony. We scar our bodies. It happens.
It happened to my childhood friend, as she looked in the mirror and hated her existence and made little cuts on her legs to take away the pain…
We don’t like to think that it does, but it happens.
Or like, when I was at the doctor last year and he’s doing his routine assessment and I hear him go, “Uhoh…” an utterance you never want to hear, right?
“Better get this checked out,” he said as he thumbed a mark on my side.
Consultations and surgeries later, and now I have a scar from where cancer used to be. I showed the scar to a friend and he thumbed it, asking, “How deep did they cut?”
They hadn’t cut very deep, of course. But I was only 40 with two small kids and so though the surgery wasn’t deep or long and didn’t require more than a few hours, the scare of it all was a lot.
“It cut to my core,” I said.
Cancer scars. It happens.
Scars are all around us. Some are even known by their scars. If you wonder if that’s true, ask Harry Potter. Ask Captain Hook. For heaven’s sake the villain in The Lion King is literally named Scar!
Scars happen in this life. It happens.
Minneapolis, your neighbor next door, is scarred from events recent and long ago, events on the street and in the hearts of humans and on the knees on the necks of humans and though I’m aware that the fence between here and there is long and tall, let’s not pretend that Saint Paul doesn’t also bear scars.
All cities. All towns. Scars happen. It happens.
Our court system is scarred and inflicts scars on those unjustly convicted.
Our political system is scarred. Or perhaps that’s a gaping wound.
The church is scarred in more places than we can count, and no amount of long robes can cover it, Beloved, it’s just true, and as a branch manager of the church I have to be honest about that fact…
The disciples in today’s Gospel reading are reeling from scars. Scars upon their reputations, as they look like fools for following that fool, that 165lb Jewish guy who ended up hanging on a cross like every other criminal scarred by an oppressive system. Scars upon their hearts as they mourn their friend. Scars upon their sensibilities as they’ve heard he might be alive, but don’t know what to think about it.
And into that scene enters Jesus, the crucified and risen one, not hiding his scars but bearing them. Bearing them because, well Beloved, God stands in solidarity with those of us scarred by as Saint Prince, a patron saint of these parts, said, “This thing called life.”
And in spying these scars, I don’t so much think Saint Thomas (commemorated on December 21st), I don’t so much think he says a statement of awe in spying the scars, but I rather think he utters a statement of shock and horror. “My Lord…my God…”
We know how the scars of Jesus happened, Beloved, even if we’re still trying to figure out why it all happened, and it’s shocking and difficult, much like many of the scars we bear.
You bear. We all have scars. It happens.
But here’s the thing, Beloved.
The scars of the crucified and risen one are not scars that need to be emulated, as some have suggested. We don’t need to hurt ourselves to be like Jesus. Live long enough and hurt will find you. There’s plenty to go around, unfortunately. If you want to emulate something about Jesus, emulate the grace, the love, the unconditional acceptance…that’s worth emulating.
And we don’t need to fascinate on them, either. I’ve had quite enough with bloody depictions of Jesus attempting to get me to feel sad or bad. I watch the news. I see Jesus shot up in schools weekly. So do you. I see Jesus gunned down in the streets. I see Jesus turned away at the border. That’s enough and, frankly, more real.
The scars of the crucified one are not to be emulated, and not to be fascinated, instead they are indicative, my friends. Indicative.
And not indicative that scars will happen in this life. We know that. We live that. We hide that truth from our children, and we often bury our scars deep inside ourselves, but they remain all the same…
The scars of Christ are not indicative that scars will happen. When Jesus bursts through the locked doors of that upper room and the locked hearts of the disciples bearing his scars he does so to indicate to them, to us, that resurrection happens, by God.
And not just that resurrection happened, like that truth can be contained in some historical event or fact.
But no, the scars of Christ indicate for us today and every day that resurrection happens.
It happens.
And that, to answer my grandmother’s question of “why would someone do that to a body…” is why Jesus shows up with scars on his body, to show that resurrection happens to we who inhabit bodies, saints and sinners though we be.
It happens now, and happens then, and happens in cities, and happens in hearts and homes and everywhere we find the scars of sin and hate and death and fear holding space.
If you leave with anything today, Beloveds, leave with this, know this to your core: the scars of crucified and risen one, the scars of Jesus, testify to the fact that resurrection happens. It takes at least three days, usually longer…
But, well, it happens, by God.
Amen.
An Endless Falling 