Scar Revision

Scar Revision--March 20, 2019

"When [Christ] was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." [1 Peter 2:23-24]

I was listening to someone talking on the radio about our skin.  There was a panel of experts--some talking about proper UV protection and cancer prevention, others about moisturizing and cleansing, and the whole nine yards.  (I don't think I would have chosen this topic on an ordinary day, but I was a captive audience on a longer drive and was waiting for news headlines to come on at the top of the hour.)  Well, after a lot of only half-listening while the panel talked about SPF ratings and the benefits of cocoa butter, there was a medical doctor who talked about treatments that now exist for treating old scars.  And all of a sudden, I knew why I had been listening all along.

The expert on scars said that these days, the specialists don't talk about "scar removal" procedures anymore, but rather about "scar revision."  And at first, her distinction was to say that many times, doctors cannot completely remove all traces of past scars, whether from injuries, surgeries, or grafts.  That is simply not possible with medical and surgical technology at this time, and so most of the time, our bodies hold onto physical marks in some form or another of the hurts we have been through. But instead, the expert said, doctors can "revise" a scar--making things less pronounced, helping the body to heal more fully, making the marks more subtle and less jarringly noticeable.  They do not remove scars, but they revise them.

Well, now the conversation on the radio took a vital turn.  It was not simply about minimizing the physical presence of bodily scars--there was the chance to revise the meaning of the scars people have endured. And the expert said that was precisely what they aimed to do: to help people who had been through terrible, traumatic, even abusive episodes in their lives, to own the scars on their bodies in new ways--no longer as signs of victimhood or weakness or unworthiness, but of strength.  Scars can be revised, and so can their meaning--they can be signs of endurance, of healing, of the power that faces adversity and comes out the other side weathered but hopeful.

And in that moment, it occurred to me that the New Testament makes the same kind of claim for what happens at the cross.  The crucifixion of Jesus looks, to the watching world, like nothing but the ruthless execution of a troublemaking rabbi at the hands of a powerful empire cheered on by a feverish mob.  But the writers of the New Testament, like medical experts of our day, do the life-giving work of scar revision.  They do not remove the death of Jesus from the Gospel's story--not at all!  But rather, they give a radically new way to see what the scars of Jesus mean.  Instead of seeing a loser getting crushed by the victorious power of Rome, voices like today's from First Peter help us to see that the cross is God's way of winning over the powers of death and evil.  What seemed like a testament to the cruelty and near omnipotence of the Empire becomes a picture of the love that does not let us go, does not flinch, and does not give up, even through death.  What seemed like a terrible act of expedient violence to exert imperial control can now be seen as the perfect expression of God's power that is made perfect in weakness.  

In other words, the scars are still there, but they are revised.  The meaning of the cross is NOT that the powerful and the violent and the powers of the day get the last word, but rather that God's way of getting the last word is to outlast and out-love even the worst that Pilate or the crowd or the lynch-mob or the grave itself can do.  The scars of Jesus remain forever--even in the resurrection he wears the wounds--but their meaning is turned inside out.

And if this is possible on a hill outside of the city gates of Jerusalem two millennia ago, then the scars we wear can be revised, too.  Yes, in fact, that is exactly what the Christian life is all about.

For a writer like First Peter, that meant, for example, that when followers of Jesus refused to return evil for evil or abuse for abuse, it wasn't a sign of weakness or cowardice, but of great strength and courage.  The followers of Jesus were strong enough to endure the meanness of the world and not to become infected by it.  Like the civil-rights marchers of the 1960s getting beaten up by the authorities to protest segregation or having the police dogs set loose on them to speak up against Jim Crow, these early Christians showed the strength of their faith and their character by refusing to resort to hatred when they were hated.  The scars were not something to be ashamed of, but rather in revision could be seen as signs of strength and grace.

And today, when we bear scars on our hearts from carrying others' burdens, these are not signs of weakness, but rather of the strength of our love to keep on keeping on, even when it wears on us.  

The frustrated and depressed mother, aching over the pain of her child and sleepless from staying up to attend to fevers and fears, she is not weak or a failure--she is strong.  The dark circles under her eyes are not marks of defeat, but signs of her willingness to endure in love for her little one.

The friends who keep getting cursed out and yelled at by another friend caught in addiction, who gets mean when they get drunk and doesn't want to face the bridges they have burned, those friends who have the courage to confront and hold an intervention may feel like they are failing their friend, but really are revealing the strength of their devotion by having the courage to tell the truth.

For the person who risks speaking up for others who are getting picked on, who are excluded, or marginalized, even if it makes other people roll their eyes or turn their target sights on the one speaking up, that is an act of courage, of love, and of strength, not of failure or weakness.

For the one who calls out the hatred, racism, or bigotry around them where they see it, only to get angry internet trolls piling onto them, or un-friended on Facebook by people who didn't want to have their world shaken up, it is not a sign of weakness to refuse to answer name-calling with name-calling while still speaking up for those who are being treated as "less-than."  Refusing to sink to the level of the trolls is not weakness, even if some think it looks like running away from a fight.  It is a sign of strength to bear the rottenness of their words and still to speak truth and love without becoming poisoned with bitterness.

All our lives long, really, the things the world will look at and call us "losers" for, the cross of Jesus turns into a kind of scar-revision.  When we respond to hatred with love, the hurts we sustain for loving are badges of honor, not sources of shame.  When we carry wounds in our hearts from enduring hardship with others, those become marks of beauty.

Today, perhaps we can hold our own scars up to the cross of Jesus and find them transformed into signs of love and witnesses of strength, carried in our own bodies.

Lord Jesus, revise our scars.  Do not take them away, but change the way we see them, so that love and grace and strength can be worn in our own skin.