Resurrection Scars: Liberated from Perfection

 the watercolour/ink paintings in this blog post were painted by John Mueller (my father) and are part of my collection of his work

My dad was an artist who worked in watercolour and ink. A gentleman commissioned my dad to do a painting of his home. This man’s house was picture perfect. Everything that was wood looked freshly painted; the brass door knocker was polished; the gardens around the house were manicured; not even a blade of grass was out of place. Now my dad’s portfolio --- the works not commissioned--- were broken barns, old tractors, rusty iron fences and gates; each painting was full of surprise, beauty, and life.

My dad painted a pretty picture of the gentleman’s house, with every detail as if he was a draftsman. The best part of the pretty picture for my dad was the downspout on the eavestrough… it had a dent, like a lawn mower had run over it. That one section of the painting made the picture real. It was certainly eye catching amidst the perfection of the rest of the just-so-house. When the gentleman took a look at the painting, he asked my father to re-do it with a non-damaged eavestrough. Driving by the house a day later, the downspout had been replaced.

 

This story came to mind this week as I was reminded of the surprise, beauty, and life of Jesus’ resurrection. An article was shared with me that directed peoples’ attention to the particulars of Christ’s resurrected body. What did Jesus’ resurrected body look like? Was it perfect --- perfect in a Greek sculpture with precise musculature, smooth skin, proportionally ideal body kind of way? Was it a body made whole? What does wholeness look like? What is resurrection?

Although we don’t think about it very much because we spend far more time considering Thomas and his doubt and belief --- the description of Jesus’ resurrected body has been right in front of us all along. Perhaps, Jesus’ resurrected body, is the point of the story.

The scripture text from Luke describes the resurrected Jesus as having scars – marks from the nails in his hands and a gash on his side from the jab of a spear. Jesus’ resurrected body had scars. And it was the scars that convinced and comforted the disciples.

 

When reading the story from Luke, focusing on Jesus’ resurrected body, I learn a couple of important things – Easter good news kind of things! It is like looking at one of my dad’s paintings of something broken, old, or rusty and it being full of surprise, beauty, and life.  The proclamation of today’s gospel is that:

Resurrection has freed us from perfection and perfectionism.

Resurrection requires that one has been wounded.

And surprise -The proof of resurrection is the remaining scar- and therein is beauty and life.

 

It is like looking at one of my dad’s paintings of a broken barn, in contrast to a pretty picture of a so-called perfect house.

The pretty picture of the so-called perfect house is flat, without personality or character. It feels unlived in, unwelcoming, and devoid of story; a show piece rather than a home. It seems staged and thus cold, without relationships. It lacks heart. For me, although pretty, it lacks life or even the possibility of life because to touch it would be to disturb it.

Give me the broken barn any day. The broken barn tells a story, many stories, and although one may not know the individual stories one has a sense that the barn has history. It is real. It is organic. It has lived a long life. It has served its purpose. It has been connected to animals and people and creation. It is rich in colour and there is beauty in the worn timbers and crooked parapets, and life in the grass growing between the floor boards and the wind whistling through the open haylofts. There is movement in the brokenness. There are surprises to be discovered. There is history and story to think about and imagine. There is life -and beauty- amidst the brokenness.

 

The beauty of Easter -the good news- is that resurrection embodies the wounds of death, incorporating them into that which becomes life. Resurrection can not be separated from the experience of death. Resurrection carries the scars of being wounded. Life comes (resurrection comes) through the healing of the wounds.

Nancy Eiesland wrote in “the Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability“ that, “the foundation of Christian theology is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet seldom is the resurrected Christ recognized as a deity whose hands, feet and side bear the marks of profound physical impairment. In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God.”

 

That final phrase is hard for many in a Western culture to grasp – in presenting his impaired body to his startled friends the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God. 

How often have you pretended to be okay or fine, completely put together, that you have everything under control? How often do you present a stiff-upper-lip, run yourself frantic being super-parent, or continually increase your production to be seen as more valuable at work? How often do we suck in our bellies, dye our grey hairs, cover our wrinkles?  

Humans get drawn into the sin of perfectionism, believing in some unattainable ideal of ‘perfect.’ We are held in bondage by striving for perfection as if perfection is the purpose of life. Jesus stands in the midst of the disciples, in our midst, resurrected with an impaired body, revealing a disabled God. Once again, just as Jesus did with the parables about the kindom of God, Jesus throws everything we think we know upside down. Perfection is not the goal, it is not a truth, it is rather an enemy that holds us in bondage, a bondage from which we need to be freed.

 

Wounded and resurrected with visible scars, God is radically identifying with persons who, according to the world’s view, are imperfect, don’t measure up, or are lacking in some way. Jesus’ embodied wounds give life and acknowledges that God experiences human life in what the world sees as weakness.

 

Author Lisa Powell, revisits Nancy Eieland’s book on the ‘disabled God,’ and in that reflection, argues that the able-body does not persist in the world to come; in other words, you will not receive a perfect body in heaven. She considers that wholeness -resurrection- is humanity journeying towards ever more transparency, vulnerability, and interdependency. Transparent, vulnerable, and interdependent -this is the body of Christ - this is a resurrected Jesus.

 

Scars are reminders that we have been transformed, and that wholeness has come through a process. We are who we are because of the deaths -the woundings- that we have suffered or continue to carry as weeping wounds that are in the process of healing to become scars in resurrection. Scars are an essential part of resurrected identity.

This Easter season, I invite us to move away from the perfect pretty picture of what we think church and church community should be, and what a perfect world is, and rather, 

fully embrace the broken, the old, and the rusty.

I invite us to be a community with depth and colour; beauty and life; a community that leads with our scars.

 I invite us on an Easter journey toward ever more transparency, vulnerability, and interdependency, evermore becoming the resurrected body of Christ. 

May this journey minister to and heal the wounds encountered in the community, in the neighbourhood, in the city, in the country, in the world, and in all creation; and may we be surprised on that day when the sun rises to find that wounds have been healed as resurrection has dawned bearing beautiful scars.