He Showed Unto Them His Hands And His Side

There are five Resurrection appearances of Christ on Easter Day itself as recorded in the Gospels: to Mary Magdalene, to the women coming from the sepulcher, to the two on the Road to Emmaus, to St. Peter, and, here, to eleven of the disciples and those with them behind closed doors. There is something comprehensive and universal in these stories. As Lancelot Andrewes observes, “the first two appearances of Christ are to women, the last three to men; so to both sexes. To Peter and to Mary Magdalene, so to sinners of both sexes. To the eleven as signifying the clergy, and to those with them signifying the laity; so to both those states of life as well … But of all the five, this is the chief for this here is when they were all together rather than scattered.”

 

Read in Chapel this week, the passage includes the encounter eight days later when Thomas, sometimes named “doubting Thomas”, was there with the others. On both the evening of the day of the Resurrection and the Octave Day, Jesus proclaims “peace be unto you” three times and shows them his hands and his side. What does this mean? It is a testament to the idea of the Resurrection that the experiences of the past are not simply eclipsed but become the greater vehicles of the teaching about the nature of essential life revealed in Christ. The Resurrection makes visible what was hidden but present in the Passion and, by extension, what is hidden but present in human experience. The challenge is about how we come to know about the essential life of God made known in Christ.

 

Mary Magdalene, we saw last week, was told “not to touch,” not to cling or hold onto Christ physically, but to be lifted up into the greater understanding of Christ in his Ascension, his going to the Father. She is lifted up and set in motion. No mention is made of the marks of the crucifixion in that story, the first in the 20th  chapter of John’s Gospel. We noted that Fra Angelico’s fresco in Florence depicts Christ in that scene with the marks of the Cross. But here in the continuation and conclusion of this chapter, the emphasis is on peace and on his showing the marks of the crucifixion.

 

They are intimately connected. The peace of Christ is what he seeks for us, but it comes at the cost of the Cross. That peace is comprehensive. It includes the peace above us in Heaven with God, the peace within us in our hearts, the peace without us, on earth with all people; in short, the peace of God through the self-giving love of God. “Peace I leave with you,” Jesus says, “my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” And it is only on that basis that he can then say, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Peace, perfect peace, belongs to perfect felicity and the joy of the Resurrection.

 

The contrast between Christ’s noli me tangere, touch me not, to Mary, and his telling Thomas to “reach hither thy finger and thy hand” to touch his hands and his side is most striking. Yet it signals an important epistemological point about the different ways of knowing and their interrelation. In both cases, Mary and Thomas learn what Christ teaches, but in ways that are appropriate to the situation of each. It is an affirmation of his Incarnate and Risen life through which the essential life of God is made known to us each according to the capacity of the beholder to behold, each according to the nature of their different ways of thinking.

 

In this sense, the readings from Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel open our minds to the greater reality of God’s truth and life made known to us through these encounters with the Risen Christ. In both cases, we are gathered into a deeper understanding of the essential life of God as that upon which our knowing and our life ultimately depend. Yet it is something that has to be taught and made known in ways that belong to our grasp of things. Importantly, these Resurrection stories, far from denying the sense-perceptible and material world, raise it up into the all-sufficient and all-embracing life of God.

 

The take-away points are that we are made for God, that we are more though, not less than the things which happen to us, and even the things that we do. Peace and forgiveness flow out of the Resurrection of Christ but without negating the Passion. In the Christian understanding, we are given to know even as we are known in the love of God in Christ Jesus. He shows his hands and his side; the marks of the crucifixion are the marks of his love.

 

They transform our lives from sorrow and grief, from despair and anxiety, into joy and gladness, a joy that no one can take from us. We are no longer huddled behind the closed doors of our minds as in a grave but opened out to freedom and love. Lifted up and set in motion but with peace and joy.