See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see.
– Luke 24:39

Today, my attention was arrested by a display in the local art center. I was a few minutes early to pick up our older daughter from a meeting down the hall, so I slipped into the display room. It was small and dimly lit, the walls lined with dark paper densely patterned with stark florals. Carefully framed against the riot of flowers and leaves were photographs of single botanical specimens—a stem from a fig tree, a cluster of half-open peonies, one golden poppy—each taken at close range against a black background. The focus was exquisite; the specimens seemed lit from within. And what struck me was that there was not one smooth, unmarked surface in the place. The texture of life is what makes it so interesting—the faint lines streaming down the poppy petals, the speckled dots on a leaf, the gnarled knobs of a branch. I don’t know why we expect human bodies to be any different. I don’t know why we think beauty is to be without blemish.

I stood there in my oversized hoodie, breast binder, and the ten pads stuffed underneath that were keeping my wound compressed, and thought about the scar that all those layers were hiding. One scarred body, standing there gazing at all these other marks on, and of, life.

One day, time showed up on my skin. That’s what aging felt like, waking up to find my once-flawless skin speckled with freckles and sunspots. Then I started noticing how cuts and blemishes acquired pigment as they healed, leaving my skin tattooed from that time I sprouted a zit, or scraped my knuckle against the fence door. Everything left a mark. And now, the marks are becoming intentional: pinpoint scars from IV lines, a horizontal line running across the cavity where the side of my breast used to be. And they will keep coming: more scars if I need to go back for lymph node dissection or mastectomy, inked tattoos if I need radiation therapy, larger lines for venous access if I need chemotherapy.

I’m not a vain person, I think, but this is something I’m coming to terms with: the evidence of things that were done to my body. The physical pain lasts a moment; the mark it leaves last a lifetime.

Last Sunday, we sang the old hymn “Jesus Paid It All” (written by a woman who got so bored during the over-long prayer and sermon at her church one day that her mind wandered and she penned the whole thing in one sitting—best story ever). The last verse goes, “and when, before the throne / I stand in Him complete” and I thought, what will I look like when I stand before God in my resurrected body? Will it be like it was? Or will it have all the scars?

I don’t know. What I do know, and what I can’t quite get over ever since I started thinking about it, is that the resurrected body of Jesus has scars. When he appeared to his closest friends after his death, you’d think they’d know him from—you know, living with him for the past few years. You’d think they’d recognize that mole he had on his cheek, or some habitual tic or motion, or just his general appearance—but what he invited them to see was something they had never seen before. His restored, victorious, resurrected body—his perfect body, as full of the glory of God and the reality of humanity as it ever was—was a body with scars. Multiple, palpable scars. And that’s how the ones who loved him the most knew who he was. See. Touch me, and see.

Jesus, the wounded healer. The scarred savior. He bore our griefs, he carried our sorrows, and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53). His skin kept score; his body told the tale of what was done to him for our sake. I wonder what his friends felt as they saw those scars: horror? fear? shock? tenderness, perhaps; wrenching wonder and joy? But they were there. In his perfect, resurrected body, in a body that could have been any body he wanted it to be, the scars were there.