As I mentioned in my sermon yesterday, the story of Thomas is one of my favorite gospel stories. There is enough in it for several sermons. One theme on which I have been reflecting for several years is the importance of the body of the Risen Christ bearing the marks of his wounds.

The resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the dead are both tenets of our faith; we proclaim them every time we recite the creed. But I doubt whether very many people seriously consider the theological significance of the resurrection. It is something to be believed or doubted, but not reflected on systematically. I was surprised during our discussion of the Divine Comedy of Dante this Lent when a parishioner mentioned that she had never thought about the resurrection of the body. Common beliefs tend to emphasize that when we die, our souls live on, but our bodies decompose.

Yet the resurrection of the body has been central to the Christian faith from the very beginning, and it is not just because Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. The resurrection matters because it attempts to say something crucial about what we are as human beings–not just disembodied souls, but souls and bodies united. The doctrine of the Incarnation insists that Jesus became human, he didn’t only seem to be human. Likewise, our bodies are integral parts of who we are. That’s why the resurrection matters. It proclaims that our whole selves, body and soul, make us who we are and are redeemed by Christ.

But the bodies that are (or will be) resurrected are very much our bodies. That’s why the marks of the wounds are so important. Jesus was not raised to some ideal state but showed on his resurrected body the suffering he had gone through in life. The Christian tradition has insisted that the same is true of us. Whatever makes us unique as individuals will continue to show forth in our resurrected bodies. There are significant implications to this idea. For many of us, it may be a disappointment, given the dissatisfaction we have with our bodies–our weight, our aging, our baldness. But it might also be of great comfort or great spiritual significance for some people. To see on themselves the marks of their suffering, the marks of their pain, now transfigured and glorified, might include a recognition that such suffering and pain made them who they are.