He Showed Unto Them His Hands, and His Side

April 8, 2018Low Sunday Sermon DGG+1

“He showed unto them His hands, and His side.”

In the Name…

The resurrected Lord has been very busy this week. He appears to His disciples, and St. Paul said that He appeared to upwards of 500 people. He walks with two friends on the way to Emmaus, He is not easily recognized until he breaks bread with His disciples. He eats fish and a honey comb. He can pass through walls, but His body is still flesh and blood. He still bears the wounds of the nails in His hands and feet, and the wound from the spear in his side. We wonder how the body of the Resurrected Lord can be a true body, with flesh and bone, but still able to pass through closed doors.

The resurrection of Jesus is the promise of our own resurrection. What will the resurrection of the dead look like? Perhaps when we think of the word “resurrection” we think of the “rapture.” Perhaps we think of cemeteries with empty graves. It seems that the world thinks of the resurrection of the dead as zombies; reanimated corpses coming up out of the ground, to eat the flesh of the living. This is a perversion of the resurrection of Jesus. The zombie is raised in a state of decay and eats the flesh of the living, but Jesus is raised from the dead with a glorified body and gives Himself to be eaten.

Jesus was obviously not a zombie, he was not a spirit, He was not a ghost, but He was raised to life with a glorified physical body. He has flesh and blood, teeth, hair, and skin; and He ascends into heaven with His resurrected body. We cannot know how this is so, but St. Paul tells us that we will be given a body like Jesus at the resurrection of the dead. For this body which is sown is “perishable, but what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.”[1]

Jesus’s body is an imperishable and glorious body. He is flesh and blood and yet He still passes through closed doors, and He showsthem His hands and His side. He bears the marks of the crucifixion, and the disciples recognize Him by His wounds. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says to the disciples, “see my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”Perhaps the disciples thought that since he appears and disappears, since he passes through closed doors, that Jesus was a ghost or a spirit, or even a figment of their grief-stricken imaginations,but the Lord corrects this Himself.

Let us not forget St. Thomas, our patron, did not believe in the resurrection. The others had told Thomas that they had seen the Lord, that they had seen the marks in His hands and in His side. Thomas had his doubts, the disciples had all had their doubts about the resurrection. “I must see Him for myself, I must put my finger into the print of the nails and thrust my hand into His side, and then I will believe.”I must see Him for myself and touch Him. Who can blame Thomas?Here is a man who wants to see the hard evidence,he wants to see flesh and bone. After all, death by crucifixion was terrible, there was no surviving it, no coming back, that is until Jesus. And Jesus appeared to Thomas and all the disciples, while they were hiding behind locked doors, and Jesus obliged Thomas. He invited Thomas “reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing.” This was not a ghost talking to Thomas, but Jesus in the flesh;in glorified flesh and blood. Jesus invites Thomas to touch the wounds that had won his salvation and the salvation of the world. Then Thomas believed and confessed, “My Lord, and my God.” There was no longer any doubt for Thomas, he knew our Lord by the wounds in his hands, feet and side.

The wounds of Christ, His death and resurrection have won for us our salvation, and with salvation comes resurrection. We share in the life and death of Jesus Christ, by dying to the world and to sin, and we will also share in His resurrection. Jesus tells us that at the judgment day, the dead will be raised, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting damnation. But we will not be raised as spirits or ghosts, we will be resurrected as Jesus was. St. Paul tells us that we will be like Jesus, when He was resurrected from the dead. Remember that Jesus says, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones as I have.” We will not be raised with our same old bodies that we have now, and we will not be raised in a state of decay like bodies that lie in the ground, but we will be given a glorified body. It will be a body that is flesh and bone and yet still spiritual.

The Church teaches that we will be resurrected with a perfected body, without spot or blemish. In case you were wondering, St. Thomas Aquinas says we will be raised without defect and impurity. Amputees will have their limbs restored, tattoos and piercings will be erased, and even with all of our modern confusion we will be resurrected as God intended us to be. The only defects in heaven, the only wounds,will be the nail prints in the hands and feet of Jesus and the wound in His side.

We believe in a literal resurrection of the dead, just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead. We recite in the creed every Sunday; “And I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting.” The world mocks us for this, it mocks us with zombies and the sanitization of death. But “blessed are they who have not seen and who believe.” Blessed are they who have not yet put their finger into the prints of Our Lord’s hands and feet, or thrust their hand into His side, and still believe. And blessed are they who await the hope of a glorious resurrection, when we shall be like Him, the first born of the dead.

[1] 1 Cor. 15:42