"Those Glorious Scars"

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas ~ Caravaggio


You can find almost anything online, some of it total trash, some of it pure gold.  Over the past couple of years, I have become familiar with the art and poetry of the Rev. Jan Richardson, a United Methodist pastor in Florida.  Her work is creative and thought-provoking, and if you follow her on Facebook or online, you will be inspired to think about Christ and the Christian journey in new, fresh ways.  Her thoughtful reflections on Thomas center around the above well-known painting by Caravaggio, and I will not repeat them here.  I merely want to acknowledge that the spark for this particular blog from me is at least partly from reading the following -- 
http://paintedprayerbook.com/2008/03/29/easter-2-into-the-wound/

I cringe every time I look at this painting.  It makes me uncomfortable.  The intensity of Thomas' stare into the gaping wound, the casual way Jesus displays it to him, inviting him not only to look but to touch it if necessary, and the eagerness of the two disciples peering over his shoulder -- it is very real, very corporeal, to use the fancy theological term, so very flesh and blood.  Which is of course the point.  The Risen Christ is no flimsy ghost, no wispy spirit, no figment of the imagination.  He is 100% a real human with a body that is both like and unlike its former existence, a body whose skin is still tender and bruised and scarred from the terrible events of the past few days. 

When I read Jan Richardson's words about this painting, I feel myself  being challenged and invited to look at it with different eyes, to see the gashes in his body as portals into something else, into new territory, unexplored terrain.  Hymn-writers and poets such as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley have meditated on these matters, considering the marks left by the crown of thorns, the railroad spike nails, the spear, seeing them as badges of honor, as something to be adored.  In his glorious hymn "Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending," often sung at Advent, Charles Wesley writes:

The dear tokens of His passion
Still His dazzling body bears;
Cause of endless exultation
To His ransomed worshippers;
With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
Gaze we on those glorious scars!

"Gaze we on those glorious scars!"  Charles, as always, has a way with words.  I'm not totally convinced, though.  I look at the scars I bear as a result of various surgeries, removal of skin cancers, and childhood injuries, and I find them ugly.  One of them is, in my mind, repulsive.  It is useful, I suppose.  It serves as a reminder of all the times I sat in the sun without sunscreen, a reminder of the frailty of my own human body.  And perhaps now it will serve as an invitation to see beyond the myth of perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect physical whatever.  For if Jesus thought it important enough to carry his wounds beyond the grave on his resurrected body, who am I to mourn the tender redness of my scars?  Perhaps with Thomas, with Isaac Watts, and with Charles Wesley, I will be able to at least summon up appreciation if not rapture for the "dear tokens" of Christ's passion and death, while loving my own wounds a little more.  Something to think about, this first week into the season of Easter.