I woke up this morning with a heavy weight on my chest. I
knew it wasn’t a heart attack because I could feel purrs coming from a 15-pound
cat who decided it was time for me to wake up and get on with the day, namely
breakfast. I don’t really mind the cat on
my chest; I mean, it’s kind of nice from
time to time. It’s like an eyeball to eyeball conversation where the cat doesn’t
say anything, and I usually don’t either;
however, it is still a conversation of
sorts. Once they see that I’m awake and
begin to stir, whichever cat it is gets
down and waits for me to do the first couple of things that I have to do first
thing in the morning before they get their breakfast.
I wouldn’t mind it so much, but now and then one of them wants to what we cat people call “making
biscuits” on my chest. I have dead spots on my chest from my mastectomy surgery,
so I really don’t have a lot of pain in
those areas even though I can feel pressure, but if they decide to make
biscuits on my scars, I’m glad I don’t have a full
feeling in that area because those claws
are sharp! There are live spots that hurt! I can’t explain to them that no, they
can’t do that because they don’t understand. Scars mean nothing to them, and so
I try to gently deflect them to the blanket next to me or the floor where I will soon be walking.
Everybody is familiar with scars
of one form or another. There are different kinds, some of them grossly
deforming, some very slight. All of them represent some event in the lives of those who bear them that was traumatic,
painful, and debilitating, even if for a short time. Depending on the type of
injury that is causing the scar, it can take weeks or months for it to heal, if
it ever does. Still, there is usually a mark somewhere that has lost some
feeling if not all of it, and that serves as a reminder of the incident that
caused it.
I’ve been thinking about
scars the last few days, even though it isn’t even Easter yet. I was thinking about Jesus when they took him from
the cross and put him in the tomb. Maybe it’s somewhat
sacrilegious, possibly blasphemous, but I wondered about when he rose, which
was a miracle. Did his wounds heal immediately? Did they leave scars? Did they
stay open wounds, an invitation to
infection and necrosis, even in the human man that was Jesus? There’s so much
about the resurrection we don’t know or understand
that this seems a bit trivial. What difference does it make if the scars were
present when he rose or whether the wounds were still open?
When Jesus first came to the disciples after the
resurrection, what exactly did they see?
They probably saw the marks on his hands where the nails had been, and
they were convinced. About a week later,
Thomas, who had been absent at the previous appearance, made a declaration that
he would not believe in the resurrection until he saw the wounds in Jesus' hands and could put his hand in Jesus’s
side. We know how that story ends. Jesus showed up, Thomas saw the nail holes, put
his hand in the injury caused by the spear, and believed. But was the wound
still fresh? Had Jesus healed himself as he had
so many other humans?
Many of the statues that we see showing Jesus after the
resurrection show him with scabbed knees, circular holes in his palms, and also
in his feet. We don’t usually see the
side or the puncture wounds that would’ve come from the crown of thorns. But how
much do we actually think about them on
the living Christ?
I know it probably doesn’t matter whether Jesus showed
people his scars or his actual wounds. He received those wounds; we meditate on
that on Good Friday and then usually forget
about them until after the resurrection when
Thomas questioned them. Since none of us have gone through a resurrection like
Jesus, we have no way of knowing what happens. Whether it was a corporal
resurrection, complete with healed injuries, with or without scars, or a
spiritual one, which allowed him to move about freely and to walk through walls
and doors and appear wherever needed at that time, we believe Jesus did come
out of the tomb and appeared to disciples and followers on earth.
Still, I wonder, do
scars have the same impact as open wounds do? I know many of us, myself included, would probably turn away from
seeing injuries such as Jesus endured, but
with scars, we would probably look and wonder what had happened. Perhaps open marks of trauma were necessary so that
people believed that Jesus was once again among them, more so than just scars would do.
Thomas couldn’t believe
until he had seen. That’s something in common
with a lot of us; we don’t accept
something is true unless we can prove it
at least to ourselves. That’s what makes Christianity so hard sometimes because so many unexplained things require
us to take them on faith rather than just by
sight. The wounds/scars of Jesus are just
an example. Do we need to see them or can we accept that he did what was said of him, namely the resurrection,
without seeing some sort of permanent
mark that indicated he had undergone torture and death and come back to give us hope?
As we approach Easter, maybe it’s time for me to ask myself if I am
looking for wounds or scars? I know what scars
are, and I know there’s invariably some pain involved in obtaining them and
even pain involved with them long-term. But am I in too much of a rush to
Easter to think about what came before it? Am I too busy looking to see Jesus
and not so much thinking of him as a sacrifice? I think perhaps for me to
remember Jesus as a human, rather than a purely divine being, I may need to see those wounds to confirm his
humanity. Heaven knows, resurrection should be enough to prove the divinity
that was his inheritance.
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