I Corinthians 15:35-44

Luke 24: 36-43 

To astonished followers, the risen Christ says: “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.”

Jesus was tortured.

That is the only label we can give to the actions described in the Gospels that ended with his death on a cross.

Jesus was tortured.

And as Luke tells the Easter story, the resurrected Christ still bears on his body the marks of torture and crucifixion.

Look at this astonishing scene. The risen Christ, the wounded Christ offers himself, inviting belief.

Three days after the crucifixion, Jesus stands among his followers. They are still trying to sort out what has happened.

Earlier in the day Mary Magdalene and other women came to some of Jesus’ followers. They said that after finding an empty tomb they were told that Jesus had risen from death. This great good news was received with disbelief and regarded as an idle tale.

That night two other followers of Jesus returned from the village of Emmaus. They told the others that this risen Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of bread as they ate together.

Now as they try to figure this out, Jesus stands among these shocked and skeptical followers and says to them: “Peace be with you.”

“Peace be with you.” Ordinarily this greeting might imply a wish that peace would be restored to these frightened disciples. But this is no ordinary greeting. This is no ordinary person who speaks. The words of the risen Jesus are not a wish, but a statement of fact: “Peace is with you.”

The One who knew the human condition of pain and death speaks the word of peace—as if to say this peace will be a central experience of those who chose to follow.

To frightened hearts the risen Christ speaks a word of peace. To those who are weary he speaks of shalom—wholeness, healing.

How do his followers respond?

They are startled and terrified. They think they are seeing a ghost.

So that there is no doubt about this peace or the One who offers it, he shows his hands and his feet which still, even in this resurrected body, bear the signs of suffering.

The risen Christ stands before his startled and terrified followers. “Look at my hands and my feet,” he tells them. “See that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”

Central to the stunning claims of the early Christians, central to our own faith, is the affirmation that the crucified Jesus did not become some “spiritual” presence but that he was resurrected with a body.

Our peculiar good news led Anne Lamott to write: “Easter can be so embarrassing. It goes against everything we know. The thing about Easter is that Jesus comes back from the dead both resurrected and broken, with the wounds from the nails still visible. People needed to see that it really did happen, the brutality, the death. He came back with a body…he didn't come back as the vague idea of spirit returning. No, it was physical, a wounded body. You could touch Him, and He could eatMSOffice.”

The wounds of crucifixion can still be seen on the Resurrected One. Not only can they be seen, it is by those wounds that the followers identify the risen Christ as Jesus.

The risen Christ is still the wounded Christ. Jesus offers himself, inviting belief.

Those nail marked hands of the risen Christ haunt me this year, giving me no more peace than they did to those first followers, who, Luke tells us, looking, “in their joy were still disbelieving and wondering.” Those nail marked hands haunt me because our country continues to torture others in the name of our safety and well-being.

Torture.

For you and me.

These past two Sunday mornings, the adult education class has gathered in Rockwood Hall before worship to watch The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib—not the usual sunny, springtime, Easter season fare. But in light of today’s scripture lesson, in light of this week’s news, perhaps appropriate for us as we seek to make sense of the resurrection in new ways.

Is the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib old news?

Not really.

The late March issue of the New Yorker had an article about former Army Reserve Specialist Sabrina Harman, who took hundreds of the now infamous pictures of abuse in the notorious Iraqi prison. She wrote to her companion back in the United States about one of her first nights at the Abu Ghraib prison. She came across an imprisoned taxicab driver in his cell handcuffed backwards to his window naked with his underwear over his head and face. He looked,” she wrote, “like Jesus Christ.”

The authors of this article remind us: “Of course, the dominant symbol of Western civilization is the figure of a nearly naked man, tortured to death—or, more simply, the torture implement itself, the cross. But our pictures of the savage death of Jesus are the product of religious imagination and idealization. In reality, he must have been ghastly to behold.”

Specialist Harman beheld and chronicled many ghastly sights while in Iraq. As you know, when the photographs were made public, the blame was placed almost entirely on the low-ranking reserve soldiers who were guards in the cell block.

And yet, the abuse and, yes, torture of war on terror detainees has been called “a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush.” New research suggests that the coercive interrogations started at Guantánamo and spread to Iraq as the result of decisions and policies of the current administration.

Just this past week, as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU, several documents relating to the Administration’s use of torture were released, including an 81 page memorandum that asserted the President’s ability to ignore the many laws that criminalize the use of torture. And let’s be clear: while the “enemy combatants at places such as Abu Ghraib were the victims of torture and abuse, many times their children and their wives were held as well in an attempt to break the prisoners.

This is done in our name and with the excuse that such criminal acts are keeping us safe from further terrorist attacks. This, in spite of the reality that information gained through torture is notoriously unreliable. Those who later were found to be innocent and with no information were tortured in our name, for our safety as well.

The most recent issue of The Christian Century reminds us that “last month the President vetoed a bill that would have required the CIA to limit itself to the interrogation methods listed in the army field manual, which outlaws electric shock, beatings, and mock executions along with waterboarding.”

The nail marked hands of the risen Christ haunt me because our country continues to hold to the option of torturing men, women, and children in the name of our safety and well-being.

New bumper stickers have replaced the pious questioning of WWJD?—“What Would Jesus Do?”—with WWJT? The initials ask us: Who Would Jesus Torture?

It is, of course, difficult if not impossible to imagine that the risen and still wounded Jesus would find anyone deserving of torture for any reason. Any act of torture for whatever reason violates the image of God in each individual. Further, it eventually corrupts and demoralizes those who engage in it.

Is this so hard to understand?

Resurrection wounds keep Christ forever a part of this broken and hurting world. As those who live in hope of resurrection we are aware of the pain and broken places in our own lives. We know ourselves to be “wounded healers.” As those who follow in the way of the wounded and resurrected Christ, we seek to act as agents of healing and reconciliation in the world. We must continue to call for and work toward an end to torture. We must continue to speak to a government that has shown no signs of listening. We must continue to speak until our words from safety and privilege are heard even if the cries of the tortured are ignored.

The resurrection lays claim upon our lives—it might be easier to doubt and avoid that claim.

The resurrection calls us into a new way of life—fear might be the fitting response.

The risen Christ calls us out into a world in which peace is rejected, in which we are familiar more with doubt and fear than certainty and courage. Beyond our doubts and fears is the work of God begun in Christ. It is left for us to continue it.

We do not do that work alone—we have one another for support.

We do not do that work on our own strength—it is God who gives us the ability.

And we certainly won’t finish it in our own lifetime—but the resurrection is God’s promise that our labor is not in vain.

Are you beginning to see? Our respecting the innate and inalienable dignity of every human being, our seeking peace in a world that extols war, will not be warmly embraced by all. There is a risk involved in any and every act of faithfulness. We have good reason to doubt and fear.

To people caught up in joy and disbelief and astonished wonder—to us as much as to those original disciples—the risen Christ continues to offer peace, even as we are called to faithfulness in new ways.

“Look at my hands and feet,” Jesus says.

Those are Easter words. They call us to answer the “No” of violence and cruelty with God’s “Yes” of life and peace.