Scars in the New Creation

On the top of my head is a scar. You’re not likely to see it unless I happen to have short hair at the time and you’re directly staring at the top of my skull. I got it when I was around 20 or so, and I was away at a Christian retreat for young leaders in my diocese, I remember the bishop was doing talks. We were playing touch football on a field during a break, and I had the ball and was running down the wing. Next to the field was a volleyball net, and the ropes from the net came out onto the field, a detail I did not notice at the time until I tripped into one of those ropes, and the metal post from the volleyball net came down on my head. At first I did not realise exactly what had happened, and so I got up intending to keep running with the ball. It was not until some other players came over and told me that I was in fact bleeding rather profusely from my head, that I stopped. 

All scars come with stories, and though I have relatively few physical scars, this is the story that goes with that scar. I have other scars too, the ones you can’t see. The marks of pain and sorrow that are etched in upon my mind and heart from my years on this earth. I expect you do too. We all do, though I confess that mine are relatively few compared to many people.

But what is a scar? Scar tissue is what replaces the damaged tissue when a wound heals. Scars aren’t wounds, they are healed wounds. They aren’t exactly the same as what was there before, because we aren’t exactly the same as we were before. 

When Jesus appears after his resurrection, he bears the marks of the crucifixion in his body. It’s not entirely clear in, for example in John 20 when Jesus offers to Thomas to put his hand into his side, whether there are still holes in Jesus, though that may be what’s implied. I don’t think we have quite enough evidence. Still, I think this is suggestive of something about resurrection bodies - that while they are made new and made whole, Jesus’ body still bears the marks of his death.

I don’t claim any dogmatism or propose to iron out all the ifs and buts of this theory (feel free to think up your own horrible forms of death or ghastly diseases in the meantime), but I do think it’s worth a little speculation - will our resurrection bodies bear scars? I think they might well do so. And our interior selves too.

The promise of God to make all things new, and to ‘undo’ all that is wrong in the world, is not a promise to wind back time, to make the sorrows and evils of this world as if they never existed, to wipe from the record and the memory all the sufferings and ills of history. It means setting things right, healing and restoring and mending. So that the people we are : damaged, broken, hurt, wounded (even as we are people who have wounded others, and in wounded others also wounded our selves) are made whole and well by being restored and healed. That restoration and healing, I put it to you, bears the scars of all our pains, because those scars are part of our storied existence. The you who is you is you precisely because of the story of the you that you were.

So in the heavenly kingdom and the new creation, when I finally met you and you me, I think you will see the scar on the top of my head. More than that, the scars on my soul from the times I have hurt and been hurt. But they won’t be sore and tender any more, they too will be healed. And the stories they tell will be of God’s merciful healing and setting all things right.

Post-Script (11th Dec 2022): I didn’t know, but there’s a gospel song that sings this truth out beautifully

Merry Clayton - Beautiful Scars