Growing up (and even now), I loved stories, fairy tales, and films with happy endings that stir my soul with a mix of sorrow and joy, bringing tears to my eyes. But like you, I walk out of the theatre or a close the book, take a deep breath, and think, “life isn’t really like that. It’s only a story.”
• Beauty and the Beast (A Beast woos a beautiful girl to marry him, she resists, because he’s a beast and she’s in love with a Prince she keeps dreaming about. She even believes the beast has the prince locked up somewhere. The Beast lets her leave after she promises to return in a week. She breaks the promise. But then feels guilty and returns to find the beast dying of a broken heart. She weeps over the beast while finally saying, “I love you.” And as her tears fall upon the beast, he turns into the handsome prince she had dreamed of. True love broke the curse. They live happily ever after) “Life isn’t really like that”
• The Notebook (Spoiler Alert. Allie and Noah, a young couple, fall in love during the early 1940s. Their story is narrated from the present day by an elderly man telling the tale via reading a journal to a fellow nursing home resident w/ Alzheimer’s, which ends up being his wife. The inside of the journal reads something like, “Read this to me, and I’ll come back to you.” Allie becomes lucid one evening and recognizes Noah. She asks him if he thinks their strong and mutual romantic love for each other is strong enough to "take them away together"; he replies that he thinks their strong romance could do anything. After telling each other they love one another, Noah adds "I'll be seeing you". The next morning, a nurse comes into Allie's room, only to find Allie and Noah dead in each other's arms, passed away peacefully together during the night. To be together forever.) “Life isn’t really like that”
• Rocky II (An unknown fighter gets the chance to fight for the heavy weight championship. His pregnant wife doesn’t support him out of fear for him. She goes into premature labor and into a coma. She awakens and ultimately blesses the fight. The champ he’s fighting declares he’ll knock Rocky out in two rounds. They go 15 rounds and both fall to the mat. Upon the count of ten, in the brink of time, Rocky makes it to his feet to become the heavyweight champion of the world. And then at the end he cries out “ADRIAN, I DID IT!” And she’s saying, “I love you, I love you...” And tears are streaming.). “Life isn’t really like that”
Life isn’t really like that, we think. But our hearts YEARN for it to be. In fact, J.R.R. Tolkien of Lord of the Rings, said stories that produce “piercing joy that brings tears,” are actually the whispers of another True world that Life really is like that.
How about the resurrection of Jesus? Does Easter cause for you “piercing joy that brings tears”? Or could it be that buried deep in the closet of your intellect or emotions Jesus’ resurrection is a tad fairy tale-ish? I speak to believers too. What do you intellectually and emotionally make of Jesus’ resurrection in this moment? Perhaps for some believers and unbelievers alike, you feel it would be nice if his resurrection were true, like it would be nice if a beast became human through the tears true-love, or if lovers died at the same time arm in arm, or if the underdog and love triumphed on the scale of Rocky Balboa. But even if moved at all regarding Jesus’ resurrection, perhaps you leave the church like you leave the movie theatre following the tearjerker happy ending: Taking a deep breath, shaking it off, and saying, “life just isn’t really like that... What’s for lunch?”
In Matthew 28, the women discovered the empty tomb of Jesus, and then saw Jesus Himself. They rushed back to tell the disciples. On their way to Galilee the disciples saw Jesus. But Matt. 28:17b (NLT) says, “but some of them still doubted.” Luke 24:10-11 (NLT): [The women told the disciples what had happened], but the story sounded like nonsense, so they didn’t believe it.” Why? Well just picture yourself. If it were me, I’d be choking back hope. It’s too good to be true. It’s too terrifying to believe. After all, life isn’t really like that.
Then in John 20:19-20 (NLT) we discover: That evening, on the first day of the week, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke he held out his hands for them to see, and he showed them his side. They were filled with joy when they saw their Lord. Filled with joy? Why? Because could it be? Death to life? Sorrow to joy? Weeping to laughter? Suffering to glory? Could it be… that life is REALLY like that?
What turned this from fairy-tale to reality for the disciples? In this moment, it was Jesus’ scars. And the ultimate True story those scars tell. And what do they tell? That his resurrection brings ecstatic hope for those who believe for this life and eternity. How? Because with every scar you bear there will come greater delight and with every tear you shed there will come greater joy; for Jesus’ resurrection promises that all things sad will become untrue.
Content
I. Jesus’ scars prove that your suffering is due to sin from past time. God created the world in all perfection and glory. There was perfect relationship and joy and intimacy between God and man in the garden. One tree out of all trees not to eat from was the command (for God’s glory, their good, and joy). The serpent convinced Adam and Eve that God was holding out on their joy. So they ate from the tree. Paradise Lost.
G.K. Chesterton in his writings fascinatingly talks about the doctrine of conditional joy. He was convinced that fairy-tales were written as echoes of another world, like echoes from a home we have never visited, but have never once stopped longing for.
He said: “In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition.” For example, Cinderella goes from rags to fortune in a coach out of wonderland driven by a coachman out of no-where, but she has to be back by midnight or she loses it all. In Sleeping Beauty, the beautiful princess had a palace and paradise to herself, but she disobeyed the king’s order by curse of death not to use spindles, and became... sleeping beauty. By way of example, Chesterton goes on to say, “The note of the fairy utterance always is, ‘You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word, “cow”; or ‘You may live happily with the kings daughter, if you do not show her an onion.’ The vision [of joy and happiness] always hangs on a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things [enjoyed] depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden. … A box is opened, and all evil flys out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.”
All fairy tales bud from the TRUE story of how our eternal joy and life was lost through sin. Sin fractured the world with evil, death, hopelessness. Sin meant “the hope of God is gone.” Jesus scars reveal that God is not to blame for suffering, but sin is to blame. Sin brought suffering and pain. We suffer from addictions, flus, cancers, and depression. Our identities get stolen, and our bank accounts get hacked. We set alarms on our cars, and double bolt our homes at night. We kiss our kids goodbye as they board the school bus with a subtle gnawing fear in our gut. Because of sin we became slaves of evil, death, suffering, and pain. Many of you have painful wounds to show for it.
But God entered into our mess, our sin, our suffering, our pain, and death and took it upon himself on the cross. With Adam and Eve, everything went wrong in the garden. Following Jesus’ crucifixion, he was buried in a garden. When Jesus rose from the grave, his first steps were into a garden. Where it all went wrong. He has come as Hero to set things right again.
Jesus died and rose from the grave to wake us from our death sleep to have joy forevermore with the Eternal Prince, to bring beauty to the beasts so that we might enjoy his love for all-time, and proving to us through his scars that the resurrection and heaven and joy forevermore are no fairy tale, but that life is really like that!
May I pause and ask you this: What wounds cloud your belief? Your hope? What has convinced you that “Life is not really like that”? Friend, if there is no resurrection, you are a victim. But if life is really like that, b/c Jesus rose from the grave, you have, and will forever overcome!
II. Jesus’ scars reveal that your suffering will end for good in time. Jesus’ resurrection scars shout a key eternal truth over your pain and suffering and wounds: Temporary. 2 Cor 4:17 (NLT): For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!
How many of you have scars on your elbows, knees, heads, or hands, from kindergarten? Me too. I have a place underneath my eye, and on my bottom lip. I remember the trauma of those moments. I remember screaming and crying. I remember crowds of people around me trying to comfort me. But you know what I don’t remember? The pain. I have scars that will never completely go away. But they do not hurt any longer.
For Jesus, the resurrection turned his crucifixion into a memory. But resurrection didn’t take away his scars. He chose to keep the scars. Jesus’ resurrection scars tell us that we will keep our scars too. Yet at the same thrilling time, his resurrection also brings wild hope, ECSTACTIC hope, that all the tears we’ve cried, the emotional blows we’ve received, the heartbreak over loss of friends and loved ones, will only be memories, like Jesus’ scars. We’ll have scars like Jesus. But also like Jesus, our scars will hurt no more. Like an adult glancing at the elbow-scar of what seemed like a life-ending event while in Kindergarten without memory of pain, so will be our eternal experience be in glory when it comes to the scars of the most devastating pains in our lives.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his book, Brother’s Karamazov, wrote a scene where there is a discussion between two people on suffering and the possibility of making any sense of it. Ivan Karamazov says,
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for.... [S]omething so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all our hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive, but to justify all that has happened.”
In other words, the glory, ecstasy, and joy of God that awaits the believer on the other side of reality will be so breathtaking, so spectacular, so utterly astonishing, that the greatest miseries, pains, wounds, and sufferings, that you’ve experienced in this life will be like forgotten kindergarten scars.
And if you believe that for eternal life then, it changes everything about your earthly life now.
Tim Keller: “Why is it so hard to face suffering? Why is it so hard to face disability and disease? Why is it so hard to do the right thing if you know it’s going to cost you money, reputation, maybe even your life? Why is it so hard to face your own death or the death of your loved ones? It’s so hard because we think that this broken world is the only world we’re ever going to have. It’s easy to feel as if this money is the only wealth we’ll ever have, as if this body is the only body we’ll ever have. But if Jesus is risen, then your future is so much more beautiful, and so much more certain, than that.”
What emotional blows are you still reeling from? What disability, disease, loss, has intruded into your life? What sin are you addicted and imprisoned to? What crippling pains are you experiencing that have brought you to the point of no hope? How many of you look back on your life and believe you got a raw deal—that your life has been marked by misery? Jesus’ resurrection and scars promise you that life is ULTIMATELY NOT REALLY LIKE THAT. What you feel now, you will not feel forever. Scripture NEVER makes light of struggle and suffering, but it does stamp it all with this glorious truth: Temporary...One night in a bad hotel... Kindergarten scars!
III. Jesus’ scars promise that your suffering will enhance your joy for all time. 2 Cor. 4:17(NLT): For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see right now; rather, we look forward to what we have not yet seen. For the troubles we see will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever.
What does this mean? It means infinitely more than not having memories of sufferings, miseries, disappointments and pain. Infinitely more. God has declared here, and by view of Jesus’ scars, that for every scar you bear there will come even greater delight and for your every tear that falls will come even greater joy; for Jesus’ resurrection promises that all things sad will become untrue. If you don’t believe that, there is no reason to believe at all—it’s simply a fairy tale of eternal proportions—and we now need to declare with Paul, “If Christ has not been raised from the dead, your faith is useless, and you are still under condemnation for your sins. … If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:16, 19 (NLT/ESV). Without hope, there is no hope.
But this is the mother lode of all hope: Jesus’ resurrection! And that his resurrection promises that the more scars you have, the more your delight will be. The more suffering you encounter in this lifetime, the more joy you will experience for all time.
C.S. Lewis said, “Some mortals say of temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory.”
In heaven, your joy will somehow be greater for it having once been broken and lost! Jesus’ resurrection gives you ecstatic hope that one day not only will all your brokenness and suffering be gone, but it will be GLORIOUS. Phillip Yancey said, “This is the incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom He loves.” What love…
Jesus showed his disciples the scars in his hands, and in his side. Those were wounds they had once thought wrecked their lives. So here he is resurrected, not only choosing to keep his scars, but have his disciples see them, and then have doubting Thomas touch them. Why?
Keller: “Because now they understand the scars, the sight and memory of them will increase the glory and joy of the rest of their lives. Seeing Jesus Christ with his scars reminds them of what he did for them—that the scars they thought had ruined their lives had actually saved their lives. Remembering those scars will help many of them endure their own crucifixions.”
And those same scars will help you and me endure our own pains, loss, brokenness, and suffering. Knowing that the scars you bear in this life time will only serve to enhance your joy for all-time.
Some of you are scared, hurting, broken, ill, lost, and disappointed in the profoundest of ways. Take heart! If this weren’t true, I would want to punch me in the face. If it is true, you ought to fall on your face and worship Jesus! For every believer who has ever lost a child, lived in a wheel-chair, been blind or deaf, suffered with mental illness, struggled with cancer... for every believer who ever suffers, the joy and delight will be heightened forever then by the pain and loss experienced now. Jesus’ resurrection promises that everything sad in your life will gloriously be made untrue by God in all ways for all time.
But do YOU believe it? Poet Patrick Kavnagh describes the promise of Jesus’ resurrection as this: “A laugh freed forever and ever.” If you believe it, you are a child of the resurrection. If you believe it, then no matter what sadness punctures your life, your laugh is coming.
Keep this in mind: While today is Easter Sunday, tomorrow is Easter Monday, then Easter Tuesday, then Easter Wednesday.... In other words, this wild hope in Jesus’ resurrection for your “then” in the next World can slowly heal your heart in the “now” of this world... as you face the darkest of times.
Think of it: Jesus dances on his own grave, forever. And that means we’ll dance with him...forever. This is the wild hope of Easter that gives you power, strength, and courage to face head-on the painful sorrows of life and bear the deepest scars of life. In fact, the resurrection means you get the last laugh…forever.
Conclusion
The resurrection scars of Jesus prove He overcomes for us. And your scars redeemed by Jesus means that you overcome, forever.
See this reclaimed wood? It’s been through so much in its life you can tell. It has a history. A story. It has grooves and marks. It has...scars. But do you know that is exactly what makes this wood so valuable? Scars do not de-value this wood. It’s just the opposite. It is PRIZED for its “scars.” People pay high dollar for this kind of wood rather than new polished wood, because this wood has a history. It’s beat up and scarred. And in those scars there lurks a story.
Jesus rose from the grave. But he kept his scars. Why? His scars will tell the TRUE story of His sacrifice for us forever and ever. His scars are glorious.
That’s why I think we’ll keep our scars along with Jesus. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, along with the pain that made those scars. With the pain gone, they’ll be redeemed scars, resurrection scars. Our scars will tell our story. Our scars will tell HIS story. That’s why our scars will be glorious! (In heaven, with Jesus in view, I wonder if we’ll be like little kids showing off our scars to one another...with a smile).
If there is no resurrection, you are a victim. Your scars are in vain. However, if Jesus rose from the grave, you are a victor. Your scars promise ecstatic joy for all time. Are you living like a victim? Or might you see your scars as redeemed in Christ to tell HIS story of hope through you? Might you see your scars as treasured, valued, and in the end gloriously beautiful in light of eternity?
You can, you can be that kind of overcomer, if you take to heart that the resurrection of Jesus promises that the worst your pains and scars, the greater your joy and delight forevermore. Friend, a mother lode of wild hope is before you. Hope that life is really like that. Do you believe?
