Jay’s Blog – Broken, But Beautiful
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There are a lot of things that strike me as crazy about the Resurrection story, but none is more confounding than the appearance of Jesus. Not that He appears to so many people, whether Mary, the disciples, or 500 others. That, in and of itself, is amazing. But I mean the way He looks to the people to whom He appears. He’s clearly in a new form, a resurrection body, something whole and complete and other than what He was before His death. People somehow don’t recognize Him at first, and then they do, kind of like when I wear a ballcap at Fresh on a Saturday, but much different and more spectacular than that.
What’s even more amazing about His appearance, however, is that He still bears the scars of His crucifixion and passion. I have to ask: if Jesus can walk through doors and just somehow appear in the middle of a room full of people, why couldn’t He just remake Himself so He wouldn’t have nail marks in His hands and spear marks in His side? What’s going on here?
In John 20:26-28, Jesus appears to Thomas, who has said, “I’m not going to believe Jesus has been resurrected unless I actually place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side.” (Thomas is easily the most skeptical person in the history of people. Who actually has to put their hands inside a dead person to believe they’re dead? I think just looking at them or taking someone’s word for it would be good enough for me. Thomas is a hard nut.)
Yet, when Jesus appears, he invites, and actually commands Thomas to place His hands on Jesus’s scars and in His side, so he’ll believe. Thomas does believe, calling Jesus, “my Lord and my God!” But is this the whole reason Jesus’s resurrected body carries the scars, so Thomas and other doubters would believe?
Of course it’s not. Christ’s scars are a visible reminder of the cost and suffering He bore for us. They serve as an eternal memorial, both to Him and to us, that there is a price to pay for restoration, for redemption, for ultimate perfection. Christ’s scars remind us that nothing worthwhile in life is free; it all costs something, whether effort, heartache, pain, or surrender.
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said. When I enter a relationship with Jesus, I surrender all and become His disciple, meaning doing what He does, saying what He says, and adopting His perspectives on life. Everything I have is His–my hopes, my dreams, my purposes, my plans, my loves, and my stuff–to use as He sees fit. Everything that I loved before that is inconsistent with who and what Christ calls me to be has to either die or be suborned to the love I have for Him. This is what’s best for me, how I was created, and what will ultimately bring me the greatest joy and happiness.
Yet, in my pride, I still want what I think I want. The old saying, “the heart wants what it wants,” is so true, even when what it wants will eventually kill us. So, my God, who loves and knows what’s best for me, will routinely require of me the cost of the cauldron–of fiery trials and challenges–that burn away what I thought was important or that I loved, only to show me the one true thing that was all I ever needed–to be one with Him.
But we don’t walk away from the cauldron unscathed, do we? It always leaves scars, sometimes physical, but most often, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Jesus is the Second Adam (1 Cor. 15), the first one to bear the resurrection and the new body that will one day be ours, our restored forefather. So, it seems as if this Second Adam is teaching us that, even though there will be perfect healing, and no more tears, and joy when we get where we’re headed, somehow we’ll still bear the scars–not to harm us anymore, but to remind us of the grace of Jesus, and the path that sanctification took to get us there.
As I reflect on our school community this year, I see us walking away scarred but sacred, broken, yet beautiful, in countless ways.
It was reflected in the spirit of a young cross-country runner, still grieving over the death of a sibling, but who allowed his mourning to fan the flames of a passion for Jesus. Two days after a cross-country meet, Coach Francis received a phone call from a parent on an opposing team who said he wanted to talk about one of our players. These calls rarely go well, and yet in this one, the parent shared that his son came home wanting to attend church the following week because our runner had told him about Jesus.
Or in the way a whole community came together around our fifth grader diagnosed with cancer, loving her well and praying her through to the Lord’s healing in her life. That night on the Grace football field, a delicate butterfly, honorary team captain surrounded by gentle giants twice her size, is a picture ingrained in our collective memory of beauty in brokenness.
Our people love each other well, as evident through a high school loving the siblings and parents of a former student lost early in the year, or a precious family mourning their husband and father, or countless illnesses healed temporarily or ultimately, or jobs lost and replaced, and teenagers who are supposed to be indifferent and apathetic but who instead have decided to be curious, passionate, and brave.
What was your beauty in brokenness story this year? In what ways was your family tempered through God’s goodness, even when that goodness took on an at times discouraging, or even frightening hue? Was it walking your child through getting cut from a team, a failing grade, a friendship dilemma, a dying dream, or a broken heart?
I remember when my oldest daughter was in middle school and decided she wanted to play soccer. She hadn’t played since she was four, but her friends were all playing, and she decided to try out. Coach Smith wisely cut her from the team, not realizing at the time that this girl was that Ferguson. Coach came to me shortly thereafter, worried that he had offended the head of school. I told him she was cute, but she was an awful soccer player, and he made the right call. My oldest was sorely disappointed, and we walked through the sadness for a few days. She had the opportunity to work hard, serve as a manager on the soccer team (mercy from Coach Smith), and got to play one game at the end of the season.
That trial, that little tiny scar on the broad canvas of her life, taught my girl one of her first of many lessons in heartache, that nothing good in life comes without a cost, and how to now play through and persevere in Jesus in the midst of trials as an adult that are not my place to tell. I’ve come to love that little scar, and all the others, and find them beautiful, critical reminders of the fact that Jesus loves, and cares, and carries, and delivers, and provides for our kids and for us when we return to Him again and again in the midst of the hard and the pain.
One of my favorite stories of this year comes from Grace U, where our music teacher was leading her kindergartners through the hand motions for “Jesus Loves Me.” If you don’t know, “love” is both arms crossed over your chest; “me” is you pointing to yourself with your thumb; and “Jesus” is touching each of your palms with the middle finger of your opposite hand. Our teacher asked the kids: “Why do you think we sign ‘Jesus’ by touching our palms?”
After moments of five-year-old pondering, the Holy Spirit illuminated little minds: “I know! It’s the nails in the palms of His hands!” These littles grasped a truth we all know too well–that Jesus is identified with His scars, with the pain He bore to set us free. Not just in one moment, but for all eternity. Even now, as He feels our pain, and as He advocates to our Father for you and me.
It may seem crazy to think about it now, but when we’ve been in the New Jerusalem for thousands of years, the pain we suffered, even that agony so intense or recent that to consider it a blessing now would be offensive, will be a memory so distant it will be difficult to recall. And yet, we’ll still carry the scars to remind us. Like Jesus, our scars, then as now, will tell the story of pain giving birth to freedom.
Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.