Wounded and Whole
A Note from the Editor: In her sermon, Laura Stone presents a radical reinterpretation of healing and wholeness and calls us towards a reimagining of what it means to accept our own disabled bodies. God loves us, she says, “not in spite of our bodies, but within our own embodiment.” Following her deeply moving sermon, Laura and her friend Peggy embody a poem from Rainer Marie Rilke’s Book of Hours, leaving us with the promise that God holds our hand as we walk through the night.
Transcript of Laura Stone's sermon
July 24, 2022
Manchester Church of the Brethren
Perhaps you have heard that scripture of Thomas many times. Or maybe it’s one of those whose story you know—doubting Thomas who needed proof—but whose text you haven’t spent much time with. This text changed for me nine years ago, the year that I got sick. Suddenly there was a black hole of a question in the middle of this passage that swirled me into its orbit. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
The question is this: why does the resurrected Jesus have wounds? Did you catch it the first time around? Do you hear the radicality of it now? Why does the resurrected Jesus have wounds? Not scars! Wounds.
After nearly every death, at nearly every funeral or memorial, someone will say this: “She’s in a better place.” We believe that. Our resurrection faith points us in the direction of healing, wholeness, reconciliation, new life that we glimpse and taste here, but we experience fully in the kingdom. But we usually follow it with this: “She can walk again,” or “His sight has been restored.” We have this picture of a normal body, of perfect embodiment. And we imagine our loved ones in the pique, perfect, normal form. The kind we see in magazines, maybe.
If Jesus is the model for our living, we might expect him to be a model for our resurrection, too. So why does our resurrected Jesus have wounds? In the nine years since I noticed this, I have preached on it several times, and I still don’t know what the answer to that question is. (By the way, we preachers sometimes preach on things to try to figure them out.) But I do know that it still captivates me because our God loves bodies. Our God feeds body, tends bodies, works with bodies; our God had a body. We worship a God who knows what it is like to have a body, which necessarily means God knows what it is like to have limits, have aches and pains, to have emotions and desires and needs, to have hunger and thirst. And the Jesus we see in the gospels loves bodies too. He was not at all squeamish.
Smelly bodies, dead bodies, diseased bodies, bleeding bodies, sexual bodies, black and brown bodies, disabled bodies. He interacted with all of these closely in the gospels.
In addition to spit, mud, feet, hair, raw fish, sores, tears—you get the point. Jesus attends carefully to and loves bodies. Not perfect bodies. All bodies. So far from seeing Thomas as a doubting figure here, I see him as a bold proclaimer. “I want to know the resurrected Jesus as the same Jesus who walked with us, who died and who is now alive again. I want to see the wounds.” Wait, what? Jesus should be shiny and new, no wounds, right? Definitely not ones deep enough to put your hands and fingers into. Why does the resurrected Jesus have wounds? Why does Thomas want to touch the resurrected Jesus’s wounds?
We get much of what we in America think about the body from Gnosticism and enlightenment spirituality. Those understandings have us sensing the body as a shell that we are stuck with in this life, but which we can transcend in eternity and maybe we can even transcend it in this life.
But we Christians proclaim a different fate. God deals with us not in spite of our bodies but within our embodiment. We proclaim that God loves us as we are, imperfect bodies and all. And God created us with bodies, intended our bodies, formed our bodies carefully from the ground. Paul even says we will have a spiritual body after our death. He is unwilling to proclaim us spirit alone.
And part of having bodies is that they don’t always do what we want them to do.
My body started becoming uncooperative about nine years ago and it continues to slowly degenerate. Peggy’s body underwent a massive change a few years ago, the consequences of which will be with her for the rest of her life. You have your own story. Your own places where your body is not functioning. Your own parts of your body you wish were different. Parts that give you pain or shame. I know this about you because it is part of having a body. There is no such things as having a normal, perfect, pure body.
When I had to pick up a cane for the first time it became emblematic of the feeling of failure and loss that I felt. I felt a dissolving of identities that had been primary; I was no longer a hiker, a runner, a pianist, an academic, capable, independent. All of those ways I defined myself were torn away from me. I didn’t know who I was, but I felt that I was somehow to blame. I struggled to go back to how things had been before I got sick, but there was no going back for me. Often, I even felt myself at war with my body.
Somewhere along the way I learned about Arthur Frank’s narratives of illness. And it opened up a new possibility. Frank, a doctor and cancer survivor, says that we can get stuck in a “restitution narrative:” the sense that if you just do the right things in the right order, take the right meds, get the right therapy, we can get back to normal, perfect, whole. Sometimes that works. But sometimes there is no cure and instead we need to enter into what he calls a “quest narrative.” I would call it a “pilgrimage narrative.” In this understanding of illness, we become someone new during the journey. We may never get home, but we can come to a sense of wholeness by becoming the hero or pilgrim of our new narrative, claiming the gifts of the journey itself. Me and my body, we are fellow pilgrims, companions even, on this path.
Why does the resurrected Jesus have wounds? Maybe it’s because healing is not the same as wholeness. Maybe because wounds and wholeness can coexist. Maybe in fact our wounds transformed can become a kind of wholeness beyond what we could have imagined beyond our wounds.
Peggy and I have been talking about this a lot. Who we have become in the face of our journeys with our bodies. For both of us, we have claimed new and deeper parts of ourselves in the midst of wresting with woundedness. For me, I have dropped ever more fully into my primary identity of child of God and the imbalances of ego are continually getting stripped away. In that new sense of identity, I find home and hope, even freedom and joy. I will let Peggy tell you her own story.
She and I have also had this conversation: Would we like our illnesses, limits, disability to go away? For me it depends on the day. Some days I might wish to give it back, trade the blessings of the journey for a healed body. Many times, though, I recognize in myself a hard-won wholeness that I wouldn’t trade for the world. It is important to know that there is no one size fits all in this.
Suffering can produce perseverance and hope, but it also can produce bitterness or continued pain. Some disabled people would love for their disabilities to be taken away. Some would choose to keep their so-called disabilities. For some it would depend on the day.
I love that the resurrected Jesus has wounds, and I love that Thomas is audacious enough to ask to touch them. I sense that Thomas himself is no stranger to woundedness. He is called the twin, but we hear nothing of his twin in any of the gospel stories. One of only three times he speaks in the gospels, he says to the hesitant disciples who are watching Jesus walk into a trap, he says “Let’s go, so we can die with him.”
Thomas has been through some stuff. This is where I suggest everyone start. If you want to become comfortable with people with disabilities, with dementia, with unkempt bodies, abused bodies, oppressed bodies, first get in touch with your own limits. Really know your own wounds. Look at them until you feel the urge to look away, and then gather courage to look some more until you see the love of God shining through them.
Let’s try this together. Close your eyes if you feel comfortable, or find a soft focus in the room. Put your feet on the floor, hands in your lap. Take a deep breath in; hold it for a moment; and let it out very slowly. Breath like that again. Deep breaths in; hold it; and slow breath out. Stay with that deep breathing, returning your attention to it whenever you need to. Cast your inward gaze over your body, and notice your own places of pain or discomfort or shame. What parts of your body are asking for your loving attention? Imagine someone loving comes near to you, maybe kneels before you or sits beside you. Maybe this is Jesus or God. Maybe this is someone who is the face of unconditional love for you in your life. Show that person the part of your body that is hurting, that needs love. Notice what they do in response. If visualizing is difficult or nothing comes, don’t force it. Simply send your own love and breath to that part of your body.
When you are ready, thank the love that came to you; remind yourself that you can return to this space again, and bring your awareness back to your breath, back to your surroundings together in this worship. Open your eyes when you are ready.
God loves you. And your wounds.
When you know your own wounds as a place of God’s transformation, wholeness shining through even when there is no cure, then you can be audacious like Thomas and come to know the wounds of others as the very places where we can know God. Others’ wounds are not primarily for inspiration, they are not for distancing or side glances or silence. They are places of honest human connections.
When you know your own wounds as place of God’s transformation, you can see other wounds as a place of God’s transformation as well. You can even offer your own wounds, transforming and transformed, to others who need connection. And in that hopeful, holy vulnerability we can learn from one another, love one another, tenderly touch wounds that cry out for wholeness.
Jesus will be in our midst, wounded and whole and will say to us as he said to Thomas: “Peace be with you.”
Peggy Gilbert is a retired school teacher who taught physical education and English, which is how she fell in love with poetry. Peggy has been a dance teacher and a choreographer. She grew up in North Manchester, IN. Peggy is a mother of two and grandmother of three.
Laura Stone is chaplain at Timbercrest Senior Living Community in North Manchester, IN. She has worked in residential mental health and music ministry. She is aunt to three girls and lives with a small clowder of cats. Laura is a spiritual director and SoulCollage facilitator.
