Grace United Methodist Church Sermon

“On Hands and Feet.”

“Look at my hands and my feet; and see that it is I myself.”

Sermon Transcript for April 26, 2009

Second Sunday after Easter

Pastor Andy Kinsey

Prayer of Preparation

O God, help us to hear where we have not heard, and to see where we have not seen, and to touch where we have not touched the presence and word of your Son, our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Message

One of the most interesting things about Luke’s account of the resurrection is the way Jesus identifies himself following the first Easter: “Look,” he says to his frightened and doubtful disciples, “Look at my hands and feet.” Shaking in their sandals, the disciples are wondering if they are having a group hallucination; in fact, they may be wondering if they are seeing a ghost until he offers to them four sure proofs of who he says he is –

two hands
two feet
ten fingers
ten toes

Proof! It’s Jesus all right. Who else could have those kinds of marks in his hands and feet? The wounds of the crucifixion are still there. They belong to Jesus.

But isn’t this a strange way for Jesus to identify himself? I mean, why not tell the disciples, “Listen to my voice?” or, “Look at my face?” Wouldn’t hearing his voice or looking at his face come closer to identifying him? What do you think? Let me ask you: Could you identify someone by hands and feet alone?

Look at the person next to you. Look at their hands and feet. (Well, okay, look at their hands!) You could recognize those hands and feet anywhere, right?

If you went to the Post Office and looked at the FBI posters, you would know those hands, right?! I can see it now: posters with hands and feet instead of faces! J “Suspect has webbed toes on both feet. Little toe on left foot appears to have been broken; turns in sharply at sixty-degree angle. Hands are square, with bitten fingernails. Small scar is on right thumb.” Do you recognize?

Typically, hands and feet are not the first things we notice about a person: Face, yes – Hair, yes – Eyes, yes – but hands and feet? Not always!

Our Hands and Feet

And yet, our hands and feet are so telling of who we are! We simply cannot get around that fact. Think about it: There are no hands and feet on this earth like yours! There are no hands like your hands!

No hands like the hands of children – the hands of children in Preschool, or Sunday school, or Kids Club – or, the hands of parents and children, holding fast together, or being family – the hands of parents, or the hands of mothers and fathers. No hands like their hands!

There are no other hands like the hands of a married couple, sharing and working together, or the hands of those who help and serve in Christ’s ministry, as on Wednesday nights with the hands that prepare our meals, or the hands of those who clean and prepare, the hands of those who do so much to serve, that we may not notice unless we pay attention, or the hands of those who play and share in our music, the hands of those who lead us in worship, or who shape us as the mentor and walk with us. There are no hands like their hands!

Look at your hands! There are no other hands like them!

My hands are somewhat large hands, like my father’s and grandfather’s. They are hands that have been cut and scratched, bruised and smashed so many times I can’t remember, with every finger and thumb being broken or jammed that the angles and bumps are now permanent features…on these hands. But they are also hands that have held the very blessings of life itself, after the birth of three children, as well as the hands that were laid on those who had breathed their last – hands I have clinched in frustration and hands excited to receive the hand of another.

I could tell you a few more stories about my hands but that would mean I leave out my feet; yes, my feet, our feet. Somehow our feet seem more private than our hands. Am I right? Maybe it is because we have

acquired the habit of wearing shoes in public that we are not prone to let people look at them, but our feet tell stories too!

Dare I ask you to look at your feet? What do you see – a corn, a blister, a stubbed toe, a wart? There are no feet like your feet! No feet like them! Let me ask you: Could you identify someone by their feet?

During Holy Week, at our Maundy Thursday service, persons were washing one another’s feet, the way Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.
It was a very humbling experience. Why? I think it is because we have basically hidden our feet inside our shoes. If we all wore sandals the way our ancestors did we would probably know more about our feet. Instead, as it is now, we know more about our hands.

I have only been at Grace Church for ten months, but I think I could identify some of you by your hands. Already, I have had the privilege of putting down bread into them, or holding them, or praying with them, and I am beginning to know what they look like and what they feel like. I don’t know which ones I like better: the hands with some wear and tear on them, or the little children’s hands with a sense of freshness. Either way, I am beginning to identify whose hands are whose.

What I like about hands, though, is that they don’t lie. They can’t. We can usually exercise some control over our faces so that they look the way we want them to look, with stares, or smiles, or frowns, but our hands can give us away every time: nervous hands, clenched hands, damp hands, soiled hands.

Do you remember those great Sherlock Holmes stories where some unsuspecting soul is introduced to Holmes? The person spends about five
minutes in Holmes’ presence, shakes his hand, and then leaves the room. Holmes turns to Watson and tells him what the visitor does for a living, family status, income level, hobbies – all based on having shaken the person’s hand!

Over the years, I have shaken or held many hands – surgeons’ hands, mechanics’ hands, farmers’ hands; little hands and big hands, nurses’ hands and teachers’ hands. I have seen people hold hands as they help one another or work for justice, or build a common future together, holding and shaking hands.

And all of these hands are unique…all of them are blessed in some way. And yet, all of them usually have something on them.

I think it was Linus who once showed his hands to his sister Lucy, telling her that one day they would be the hands of a concert pianist or rocket scientist, only to have Lucy look them and sneer: “They have jelly on them.”

All our hands have jelly on them – dirt, too; even blood, somebody’s blood. It was Pilate, after all, who washed his hands of Jesus, of responsibility, of doing justice. He tried to clean his hands, but it didn’t work.

Jesus’ Hands and Feet

          In fact, three days after the crucifixion Jesus appears to his disciples and shows them his hands and feet: “Look,” he says. And what did they see? They saw everything he had ever been to them. They saw the hands that had broken bread and blessed fish, holding it out to them over and over again. They saw the hands that had pressed pads of mud against a blind man’s eyes and taken a dead girl by the hand so that she rose and walked. They saw the hands that danced through the air as he taught and that reached out to touch lepers without pausing or holding back. There were no hands like Jesus’ hands.

          And his feet – the ones that had carried him hundreds of miles, taking the good news of the kingdom to those who were starving for it – into the
homes of criminals and corrupt bureaucrats, whom he treated as long-lost kin; and into graveyards where demoniacs lived like wild dogs, whom he freed from bondage forever.

          Looking at Jesus’ feet, the disciples remembered the woman who had wet them with her tears and dried them with her hair, and Mary, who had sat there quietly protected by him while her sister Martha railed at her to get to work. There were no feet like Jesus’ feet.

          But Jesus’ hands and feet were wounded now. The hands that had joined the disciples together to themselves and to others, the feet that had joined him to the earth – had holes in them, the kind of holes that hurt you to look at, that left a deep impression on the eye and the heart.

Earlier, when the disciples had figured out what was coming to those beloved hands and feet, they had fled, hiding themselves away where they could not see the bleeding nor hear the pounding of the nails.

But not anymore: now Jesus’ hands and feet were front and center. Now they were there for the whole world to see, to see what he had gone through, to tell the truth about what had happened, to show what he had suffered. “Look,” he said, “see my hands and feet.”

Closing Touch

I am sure there were those who wished Jesus would have come back all cleaned up, but he didn’t. And I am sure there were those who didn’t want to see the scars, but they were there. That’s one of the ways the world would come to know who he is, by looking at those wounds made by hanging on a cross, to see where he’s been.

It’s also, by the way, how the world will know and recognize us – by our hands and feet – where they have been, whom they have touched, how they have served, what they have proclaimed.

In fact, before ascending into heaven Jesus told the disciples that they would be his witnesses; they would be the ones to whom the world looks for signs of Jesus’ work, for signs of his body.

It’s the same for today: When the world looks for the risen Christ, it looks at us – not so much at our pretty faces or sincere eyes but as at our hands and feet – what we have done with them and where we have gone with them. That’s what the world wants to know – what we have done and where we have gone with these hands and these feet – the only ones in the world like them – like yours, like mine, like his. Amen.

Notes

1. Thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor for insights into this sermon from “Hands and Feet” in Home By Another Way (Boston: Cowely Publications, 1999), p. 119ff.