Turn in your Bible to Luke 24:36. Now in Luke’s Story, we are joining the action on the first Easter evening. The Story immediately preceding ours this morning is the Story about two forlorn disciples walking home from Jerusalem to their village of Emmaus, some 5 to 7 miles outside of Jerusalem. They had been in the city that day and heard these fantastic tales that some women claim to have seen Jesus alive, and the city was all astir. While they were walking home, a stranger sidles up to them and joins their conversation about all the strange things happening that day in Jerusalem. The stranger begins to open up the scriptures to them so they can understand all that happened to Jesus was already spoken about in the Hebrew scriptures. They reach Emmaus and press the stranger to join them for the evening and as they were eating, the stranger took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, and immediately their eyes were opened – it was none other than Jesus! And then the two disciples immediately went straight back to Peter and the others in Jerusalem and told them they had seen the Lord. This is where we pick up in the action. Listen to the Word of the Lord.

Luke 24:36-48

³⁶While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” ³⁷They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look 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.” ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. ⁴¹While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence. ⁴⁴Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures,⁴⁶and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things.^[1]

I really want us to try to put ourselves into the narrative; what might have you felt and experienced if you had been there that night?  Luke paints a loaded picture of the scene. Unlike with the two from Emmaus when he gently revealed himself, Jesus just pops in while they are all gathered in this highly charged, deep discussion and more or less says, “Hi y’all!”  He greets them with the traditional Hebrew greeting shalom aleichem which means, “Peace unto you.”

I wonder what happened then? Did the room go quiet? Could you hear a pin drop?  Luke indicates four movements took place. First, the disciples were literally scared to death. Next, the disciples’ fears turn into a combination of utter joy and “I can’t really believe this is happening.” Third, we are told Jesus opens their minds to understand what is going on in light of the Hebrew Scriptures. And finally, the disciples are given a job to do. As I mentioned, Luke has written a tight, loaded scene.

Those gathered that late night are really no different from you or me. They weren’t expecting Jesus to be alive any more than we would have been, and so Jesus had to prove it was really him. What did Jesus do that got them to start believing? He showed them his scars. He let his scars tell the Story of what happened to him.

Our scars tell a story. What story do your scars tell? I can look over my body and see the scars I’ve been accumulating since I was four years old. The scars on my right palm and wrist are so profound that my hand surgeon who did my carpal tunnel surgery asked me about them. I told him that when I was four or five, I was standing on a stool washing the dishes with my mom. In front of the sink was a large window into the backyard and I watched as a neighbor’s dog began attacking our dog. Before my mom could do a thing, I was tearing out of the kitchen into the yard and that’s when the neighbor’s dog took a bite out of my hand and made quite a mess of it.

There’s this scar on my right forearm caused by a hard scrape on some scaffolding I was erecting during one of my college jobs.

Then, I’ve got this scar just to the side of my right eye from the time I went out with a buddy on Christmas vacation from college one year. It was like two in the morning as I was headed home after having too much to drink and spun my 1962 VW Beetle three times before it rolled over as many more times landing between two large oak trees. The car was totaled. I was so fortunate no one else was around that time of night. I was blessed to only have received bruises and a slice along my right eye.

I also have a twelve-inch scar running down over the top of the left knee from where Dr. Frankenstein did a total knee replacement because of sustained sports injuries from when I was younger.

This little bump on my nose is from the two broken noses I got back when I was fighting full-contact martial arts.

My latest are the two slices on both sides in front of my hips from where I had bilateral hip replacement over the last five years. Here, I’ll show you! Ha!

Each of my visible scars tells a story about certain times in my life. Each one describes an event or moment that I can give a full accounting of as well as the lesson learned from the instance it happened.

My hand reminds me never to try to get in between two dogs in a dog fight to break them up.

The bump on my nose reminds me that when in a fight, you must keep your hands up to protect your head because if you don’t, they give you the stupid nickname, The Nose, around the dojo instead of a cool one like Lightening Hands.

The scar along my eye is a vivid reminder that you just can’t fix stupid, and you should never drink and drive.

The knee scar makes me grateful my children never played high school football.

My hip scars daily remind me that your body does get worn down the older you get, and you better take care of it.

So, tell me about your scars? What story do they tell? What lessons have your scars taught you?

And yet, not all scars are visible ones, are they? Some of us have hidden scars no one can see because they are emotional or internal scars. These are scars from physical, emotional, or sexual trauma that were thrust upon us. These wounds are every bit as real as visible scars and yet they are not visible to others. These are scars suffered silently and in isolation.

Years ago, I took communion to a man in his late 80’s who fought in the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. He got caught in a firefight and barely got out of the way of a grenade tossed at him by a young German soldier. Following the explosion, he got his bearings and saw the same soldier shouldering his rifle to finish him off. The man I was visiting shot him first. He told me to go to his dresser and pull out a box for him. He opened it up and carefully unwrapped a piece of dark metal. “This is the shrapnel they pulled out of my leg from that day. Preacher, the person I shot was just a boy! I can’t get the image of his face out of my mind! Will God ever forgive me?” For over fifty years, this man silently carried with him the scars of war he never shared with anyone before, and before he died, he wanted absolution. Who was I to deny that from him?

Pastor/author Josh Scott from Nashville made an astute observation. He said, “Jesus’ scars also tell a story. They paint a vivid picture of a human being committed to a vision of God and God’s kingdom that is just and generous, with an embrace wide enough for anyone and everyone.” Jesus’ scars tell the tale of a man who dared to stand up against the religious, political, and cultural Empire to proclaim all people are precious in God’s sight. His scars tell a story of refusing to be sucked into violence and hatred by taking the hard way of humility and trying to demonstrate life-changing reconciliation through the Cross.  Scott says, “The truth is the scars by which Jesus’ disciples know him encapsulate the very essence of the life he lived that led the disciples to him in the first place.”_^[2]             

Beloved, the disciples came to recognize Jesus by his scars. It’s when they see and touch the scars their incredulity turns into joyous belief. What do your scars say about you? How have those scarring moments shaped who you are as a man or woman of God? Have the causes of those external or internal scars made you angry, bitter, vindictive? Or have you, like Jesus, redeemed the pain that caused those scars in the first place?

Author Scott Peck’s classic book, The Road Less Travelled, begins with this line: Life is difficult. Life is difficult, isn’t it? As Christians, we realize the antidote to this difficult life is given to us at Easter. God entered into this difficult life, endured its injustices, violence, and hubris, physically suffered, and died – just like you and me. Jesus did not play victim to those injustices, violence, hubris, and suffering, he redeemed them. He chose to reimagine and redefine life and death and provide a path to follow so that we can do the same.

The power of Easter is that it gives us freedom to have born in us a new way of seeing life, no longer as victims but as conquering pioneers. Our Easter faith lets us see and experience our scars afresh, inviting us to make a choice on how we are going to interpret our suffering.  Jesus chose to redefine what it means to live and die and has the scars to prove it. So, each of us gets to choose if our trauma and scars define us or does Easter’s hope and promise redefine our scars. What exactly, is the Story your scars tell? Amen.

© 2024 Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801, and may not be reproduced or repurposed without permission from the author. All rights reserved.

[1]New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org.

[2] Josh Scott, “April 14. Third Sunday of Easter”, The Christian Century, April 2024, p 25.