Wounds of Authority

 Luke 24:36b-48

April 18, 2021

Easter 3

 

I have a friend in Texas who’s a pastor.

He works in the Texas prison systems

with victims of violent crimes,

Specifically, those who want to meet the convicted offender.

He does a lot of preparation work with

some of them on death row.

 

His work was actually featured on the

48 hours news program

so there was video of one of these meetings

that he showed us in a class.

The person they focused on was

a woman who’s name was Paula.

 

Paula’s 18 year old daughter was killed

about 17 years earlier by a man named John.

He had stabbed her and her roommate in her apartment

He was on drugs at the time.

 

Paula had been trying to convince the Texas

prison system to let her speak with John for 13 years.

And she finally got her opportunity,

with this pastor’s program

John was on death row for the murder

and he was going to be executed in a few months.

 

We saw a bit of video of my friend working with her before the meeting

She was hard and tough. 

She was understandably bitter and angry.

She didn’t know how it would go.

Her family was not in favor of the meeting.

We also saw video of John, the offender.

Over time he had become extremely remorseful.

 

They met through a plate glass window in the

death row area of Huntsville prison.

 

When they finally met, she spent the first half hour just crying.

She reminded him that her daughter was a person.

He repeatedly said he was sorry,

but he knew sorry would never be enough.

Then they talked for the next five hours.

Paula asked John many questions about what had happened.

He learned about her life,

and she learned about him.

 

In my mind, I had thought that they were

on completely opposing sides of this equation and

they would never have a connection.

But the truth is their lives were completely interconnected.

Through this terrible event,

they shared more together than other people.

They shared the same wounds.

 

Her wounds were the mirror image of his wounds,

the pain of her daughter’s murder that she lived with

was the shame that he lived with too.

They discovered that through this pain,

they knew each other intimately.

 

She kept on saying to him,

like so many mothers have said to their own difficult children.

“I don’t know what to do with you, John.

I don’t know what to do with you.”

 

One of the most startling things to me,

at the end of their meeting

they were separated by a piece of glass

and before they left, they each held their hands up

to the glass, touching their wounds.

 

Imagine this meeting with Jesus and the disciples.

The last time the disciples had seen Jesus,

they had run away and left him.

One of their own had betrayed him.

Peter had denied knowing Jesus at all.

They abandoned the leader that they had

pledged undying devotion to.

They had been completely and embarrassingly human.

They were surely full of sadness at Jesus passing

and they were surely also full of guilt that they didn’t do more to stop it.

The last time Jesus was alive, everyone who loved him left him to die.

 

Jesus came back, but what would his reaction be?

Would he be infuriated?

Would he condemn them?

Would he scold the disciples?

 

No, he enters the room with them and says:

“Peace be with you.”

He declares peace between them.

Their wounds were the same.

Jesus’s wounds of pain were their wounds of shame.

He comes to them to be with them.

Asks to share a meal with them.

To bring them peace.

 

The risen Christ appears to the disciples

still in possession of his own wounds,

and understanding their wounds as well.

 

Forgiveness has often been touted as one

segment or one program of Christianity.

Just one thing that Jesus does

and that Jesus asks us to do.

 

But the appearance of Jesus raised

is the embodiment of forgiveness,

it is the avenue to rebirth in God’s name. 

And the time we have experienced real forgiveness

We have witnessed the resurrected Christ on earth.

 

Jesus says that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is

to be proclaimed to all nations beginning in Jerusalem.”

Starting with Jerusalem, the city where Jesus was crucified.

The city that also shared his wounds with him.

 

Hands of Proof
Hyatt Moore

Forgiveness is the whole of the mission that Jesus give to his people,

Not just something that’s done at the beginning of worship

and then we’re done with it.

But forgiveness and all it encompasses.

 

Forgiveness – the belief that all things can start again.

That a relationship that’s been harmed,

even by the worst, can be restored.

That people are never forsaken

That nothing is lost, no one is hopeless

not even a murderer on death row.

 

In church, we throw around

the word forgiveness a lot

so much so that we might think that it is simple

or that it happens all the time

or even that it’s expected

that each of us will experience it on a regular basis.

 

The actions and tasks that come with forgiveness might come easily:

But I think that true, deep felt, freeing forgiveness,

is nothing short of a miracle.

When it happens to us, when we experience it,

when we forgive others, or ourselves,

we are experiencing a miracle.

The miracle of the resurrected Christ.

 

I think that when Paula first thought about talking with John,

she was not planning on feeling compassion for him.

I don’t think she was planning on really forgiving him.

I think she wanted to give him a piece of her mind and leave him.

As I was watching, I don’t think I could have forgiven him.

But I think the Spirit intervened.

 

She stayed with him.

She met with him repeatedly over the next few weeks.

She was still torn, she was infuriated with him at times.

But she was came to his execution when his own mother wouldn’t come

and the last thing he heard was that she loved him.

That is nothing short of a miracle.

 

There was a soldier who

was terribly wounded in the Vietnam war.

From his torso up to his head he was burned.

His face and his whole upper body was terribly disfigured.

 

He spends his time now working at hospitals

in the burn unit talking to recent burn victims.

He tells them that somehow they will live.

They will get through.

 

Doctors and nurses have told the patients before,

over and over again but the patients don’t believe them.

The doctors and nurses saying it didn’t carry the same

weight as this person who had been through it.

This man was a testimony in his life.

This man’s authority is in his wounds.

 

Paula’s authority is in her wounds.

Forgiveness is possible.

There is hope.

 

Jesus authority is in his wounds.

Jesus with his real flesh and bones,

stands among us saying,

“Peace be with you.

 I have those wounds just like you.”

But these wounds are not the end of the story.