“See that It Is I Myself”: Recognizing Love Embodied
A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Third Sunday of Easter by Holly Huff, Postulant for Holy Orders.
“Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, Peace be with you. They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
The theme of sight, of witnessing and recognition, runs through today’s readings. How do we recognize Jesus? When he appears to his disciples after he has been raised, he is not immediately recognized. Each Gospel account contains elements first of strangeness and expectations unmet, and then a shift and their eyes are opened and they see the Lord. Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener at first. It is when he calls her name that she knows his voice and recognizes him. On the road to Emmaus, which comes right before today’s reading from Luke, Cleopas and the other disciple walk for miles with a stranger, relating the traumatic world-shattering events of the days prior, the betrayal and trial and crucifixion, and hearing this sojourner’s interpretation of the scriptures. But only as night falls and they share a meal do they recognize him. Their eyes are opened and they recognize him as their Lord in the breaking of bread.
This kind of recognition is more than a confirmation of facts. We are talking about something more personal, more relational. The disciples have an affective experience: their hearts burn within them; they are filled with joy and wonder. Their minds, too, are opened: Jesus helps them to understand the scriptures, explaining all things in light of himself, connecting his life to what has been written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead, repentance and forgiveness of sins to be proclaimed in his name to all nations—and you are witnesses of these things.
We too are witnesses of these things. Not forensic witnesses, to be cross-examined on past events or made to pick a perp out of a line-up behind glass. Eyewitness accounts we know are notoriously faulty; we thought we saw a ghost. No, we too are witnesses. The disciples are more like character witnesses. This is who Jesus is. We know him, we’ve walked with him and here he is, doing again the things that he always did: teaching from the scriptures, eating with his unruly bunch of improbable friends, seeking after the one lost sheep, dispelling fear, preaching peace. “See that it is I myself,” he says. I am who I am.
This witnessing is something like being around a loved one you haven’t seen in a long time, visiting after a long time spent apart. Pandemic, anyone? When you’re reunited with someone, remembering what they’re like after a long time, and then they do something that is so essentially them—the quirk of an eyebrow, a characteristic laugh, a turn of phrase or a penchant for hyperbole, the neurotic way they set the table—and it is so essentially them that even having been together for an hour already it’s in that moment that you recognize them. Oh, it’s really you!
With Jesus, there are quintessential details like this that remind the disciples that it is really him: His voice, reaching out in loving attention. “Mary,” he says. The sheep know the voice of the shepherd. Eating together. “They recognized him in the breaking of bread—'Did not our hearts burn within us as he explained the scriptures to us?’” And particularly the marks of his suffering written on his flesh. “Thrust your hand into my side,” he says to Thomas, and Thomas recognizes him. “My Lord and my God.” And again in today’s passage, “Look at my hands and my feet and see that it is I myself. Touch me and see.”
The wounds of crucifixion are the tokens Jesus offers the disciples as evidence that it is really him. These wounds in his hands and feet are essential to who Jesus is, and he holds them out as evidence: touch me and see. These marks witness to the essence of who he is: a suffering Messiah, who has born the griefs and carried the sorrows of his people. The Author of life who has undergone death and burst through the grave, undoing death from the inside out.
His solidarity with suffering humanity is a core trait by which his disciples recognize him. They recognize not the idea of Jesus or the demographics of Jesus—recently deceased 33 y.o. Jewish Palestinian male, Yeshua from Nazareth—but they recognize the heart of who he is: love made flesh, God with skin in the game. Whatever pain we experience, whatever fears rule us, whatever reigns of terror we live under, Jesus knows them, not as an idea but he comprehends our most difficult experiences with embodied compassion. He has taken them into himself, and he has graven us on his palms. He is present to even our most painful experiences and transforming them from the inside out. Jesus is working resurrection and redemption right now, new life unfurling from the inside out, improbably, miraculously. From the empty tomb, from the depths of the earth, green shoots slowly pushing up through the cracks. Love lives again. Our own scars, the wounds that haven’t yet closed over—this is the location of resurrection. New life is coming up through decay and hurt. “Unless a seed dies it remains alone but if it dies it bears much fruit.” Our places of greatest wounding and suffering are the places where God is most profoundly present. When we are weak, then we are strong, because God is strong and mighty to save and God hears us when we call from lowliness and littleness.
If you’re anything like me, it is hard to confront and confess our dependence, our total reliance on God. It runs counter to our bootstrapping American ethos, counter to the pride of self-will that forged the initial separation from God we call the Fall. We look first to human achievement for salvation. What are the dumb idols we run after, those things not capable of response or relationship that we mistakenly pursue, and for so long? Perhaps reputation, or reliable comforts, material success, absence of conflict, applause of others, a self-righteous confidence in our own moral rectitude. These tendencies are obstacles to recognition. When we live by them, we become less ourselves and more ghostly, alienated from ourselves and each other, specters haunting our own lives, living always at a little distance from our body.
What we will be is still being revealed and this revelation of the children of God unfurls as we walk with humility and a willingness to turn to God for our help, to ask for what we need.
In the passage from the acts of the Apostles, Peter and John have healed in the name of Jesus a man lame from birth. This man sat outside the Beautiful Gate of the temple each day, asking alms and expecting to receive, Luke tells us. Peter addresses the crowd, who have seen what happened with their eyes but who don’t yet recognize the relational reality at the heart of this healing: “Why do you wonder at this—why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” “The name of Jesus itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.” He invites the bystanders of the crowd to truly become witnesses, not just eyewitnesses or spectators now but friends: look, this miracle is taking place even now in the presence of all of you! Among the people you see and know! It is not by Peter and John’s power or piety that this man now walks and leaps and praises God! Recognize the power of God acting in your midst.
The power of God is working in our midst, in the embodied reality of life as we experience it, right now, from moment to moment. Be it painful or pleasant, God is in it. In the midst of our fear, our loneliness, anger, our exhaustion and worry, God is present to us and greets us: peace be with you. Do not be afraid. Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Recognize me, and in recognizing me, come home to yourself, too. Leaving the shadowy realm of ghosts, we find Jesus already solidly here. He has made his home with us; he will never leave us, and what remains is for us to recognize him. Oh, it’s you!
Amen.