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I remember taking my first real high school date to see the movie Jaws -- that summer blockbuster from the mid-'70s that brought sharks as big as houses into the national imagination. I also recall fantasizing that perhaps my date would need to depend on a masculine shoulder in the face of such marine carnage. The truth of the matter is that my hands never stopped gripping my own armrests throughout the movie. She may not have been safe at the shore that summer, but she was certainly safe from me that night.

One of the few funny scenes in the movie is where Richard Dreyfuss and his companions begin comparing boating accidents and shark and barracuda bites, around the table one night. They begin showing each other their scars. A shirt is pulled up. A sock is tugged off. Pants are pulled down. These old sailors reveal more and more of their gouged flesh, their old, dated scars, utterly engaged in the art of one-upmanship. More and more clothing falls to the floor until they're standing in little more than their underwear. They finally look at each other, throw back their heads, and laugh. I think a shark bumps the boat right after that.

The resurrected Jesus makes several Easter appearances in our Gospels. Usually, though, he is hidden at first. Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for a gardener and not until our Lord speaks Mary's name does she finally recognize him. On the Emmaus road, Jesus walks along with two admirers. Neither has a clue who he might be. Not until he breaks some bread is Jesus' identity revealed. Another time, Jesus is on the beach one sunny morning and calls out to the disciples who have returned to fishing. They don't recognize their Lord until he instructs them to cast their nets on the other side.

In today's reading, Jesus again reveals himself to the disciples. But once again they can't tell it's him. They are together on that first Easter evening, behind locked doors in fear. And who can blame them? Crucifixions in those parts were contagious. Mary has reported the fantastic, farfetched events of the morning. Suddenly Jesus stands among them and says, "Peace be with you." But they don't put two and two together. Not just yet. I don't know what they thought they were looking at, but they weren't thinking "Jesus."

Then he lifted up his shirt and pointed to the scar on his side. Then he pulled back the sleeves on his robe and showed them his palms (an ironic contrast to the "palms" waved only a week earlier). Maybe he even pulled off his sandals and showed them his feet. At any rate, he revealed how the Romans had roughed him up. The text reports these words: "Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord." Not a moment sooner. Then. Here's an important detail for latter-day followers: Those early disciples did not have a clue who was standing before them until Jesus showed them his scars. Only then did they rejoice.

Near the end of Homer's epic, The Odyssey, Odysseus finally returns home after many years of travel. But when he comes home, he is disguised as an old man. The aging family nurse, Eurycleia, begins to bathe the man she thinks is nobody more than some old stranger. Only when she sees Odysseus' old hunting wound, inflicted by a boar in his youth, does she come to recognition. Homer writes: "This was the scar the old nurse recognized; she traced it under her spread hands, then let it go, and into the basin fell the lower leg ... sloshing the water out ... her eyes filled up with tears; her throat closed and she whispered ... 'You are Odysseus! Ah, dear child! I could not see you until now.' "1

Jesus showed them his wounds. The disciples rejoiced when they saw Jesus. They could not see him until then.

This easy-to-overlook detail has a lot to say to us modern church members. Here we have a risen Jesus, safe and sound in the bosom of his Father, past the trauma of Good Friday, nothing but good times ahead, and his friends haven't a clue who he is until he shows them his scars. There is a profound connection between the risen Christ and the scars of Christ. Easter does not totally negate Good Friday.

"Jesus will always bring you peace and joy." Ever heard anyone say that? "If you're a real Christian, you'll always have peace in your heart." Well, what if you feel great sadness? Does that mean you're not a real Christian? People bear real and traumatic scars from a real and traumatic past. But when Jesus comes, we are sometimes led to believe, then everything is rosy and gay. Not only do I think that's hogwash, I'm also fairly certain that Jesus feels it's hogwash. "He showed them his hands and his side." It wasn't a heavenly cloud that brought those Easter disciples a sense of peace and recognition. It was a scarred Jesus who dared to show them his wounds. Even Easter does not erase scars. "The problem with so many modern Christians," said Flannery O'Connor, "is that they want faith to be a warm electric blanket, when of course it is the cross."

So what does this story say about the modern church? What does it say about all of us who carry around scars and old wounds? It means, I think, that we are to find a way to show our scars to one another. To stop pretending they don't exist and stop believing the lie that good Christians with the right sort of faith don't have such scars. Perhaps the true test of an authentic church is to follow Jesus' lead. "He showed them his hands and his side." How will we show one another our wounds?

Perhaps this is what the doubting Thomases among us are really looking for. Authenticity. Do they doubt Jesus? Or his body, the church? Church is not about starched people who assemble for an hour each week, knowing little about one another. Church is about gathering around a scarred Lord who profoundly touches our own scars and unites us in community with precisely what we have in common: not our potential, not our social standing, not even our denominational theology, but primarily our woundedness. Perhaps we want an explanation for those wounds. Perhaps we want more than this story offers. "The only 'answer' [the Bible] gives to creaturely suffering is Jesus ... God's response to human suffering and to the 'groaning' of the whole creation is not theories about Jesus, but Jesus himself."2

And so he stands in the middle of the community. "Peace be with you," says this Jesus with palms outstretched, wounds wide open for examination. And when we say it to each other before Holy Communion each week, it is far more than a way of saying, "Good morning." It is sharing profound hope with another human being. It is offering the promise that Christ knows about your wounds, that peace is discovered in the healing bath and welcome table. Easter has a heck of a lot to do with Good Friday.

"Ah, dear child," said the old nurse Eurycleia upon discovering the wound. "I could not see you until now."

"He showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced."

It's a great comfort to me that Jesus' wounds were openly presented to his followers that first Easter evening. It is precisely how the disciples came to know that it was truly Jesus.

And perhaps that is still true. Perhaps others will come to know that Jesus is alive when his church dares to show their scars to one another and say, "Peace be with you."

"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, I will not believe," said Thomas.

Jesus bore scars even on Easter. So must we come to terms with our own. Our scars are a large part of who we are. As we share them in community, perhaps Christ is saying: "Ah, dear child. I could not see you until now."

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1. The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Anchor Books, 1963), p. 368. I am indebted to William Willimon for pointing out the connection between this passage and the Thomas story.

2. Douglas John Hall, "Suffering -- God's Answer" The Lutheran (March 22, 1989), p. 6.