Hand and eye recognition techniques are popular today. Whether you want to get into your computer or through security at the airport, today, you can simply place your finger or hand on a glass screen, and whoosh, you’ve been recognized!
You don’t need a password, don’t have to do anything except be who you are. Your identity is engraved on the palm of your hand!
Our palms may help machines remember who we are, but we also use the “palms” of our hands to remember things we hold dear. Ever want to remember the lines to a play and write them on your palm? Or maybe a hard-to-remember answer to a test? Or maybe it’s that special symbol only you and your best friend share, written into the palms of your hands? Or tattooed on your wrist?
In the days of Jesus, the Greeks would often henna-paint or tattoo inscriptions on their hands. Sometimes it would be an image of a Greek temple. Sometimes it might be a famous saying or a special symbol. Usually in purple or blood-red, these symbols reminded the wearer of something or someone important to them in their lives, something they never wanted to forget, or never would forget!
God too has “hand tattoos”! Listen to the words of Isaiah:
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her
womb? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
Behold! I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.
Your walls are continually before me!” (Isaiah 49:6)
God inscribes us –not just our names but our very being and identity, who we are, hand-made by God, right on the palms of God’s hands –the same hands that created the entire universe, and formed the skies and seas, the same hands that made us from water and dust, and who breathed life into us with His holy breath.
God inscribes God’s beloved people, each one of us, right on the palms of God’s hands, so that God will never forget any one of us.
We are always in God’s line of vision. Always we remain an everlasting remembrance of God’s loving creation, the ones God holds so dear that God would pursue us to the ends of time.
“Look at your name engraved in the palm of my hands!” God reminds us every time we feel alone or feel God has abandoned us.
“I will always remember you.” God assures us every time we feel lost or discouraged.
“I will always love you.” Croons God every time we feel shameful, or guilty, or “not good enough.”
And with this love, God tumbles the walls of our hearts and ushers us in!
There is no greater love than the gift of God’s Son Jesus, sacrificed for us, and resurrected to assuage us!
If ever you doubted God’s love, all you need to do is think about the sacrifice of self that God makes on our behalf. God literally allows us to “kill” Him with our apathy, and our anger, and our defiance, and our deviousness. And yet, God’s voice keeps resounding in our heads….
“Even so, I will never forget you, never stop loving you. Look, I have engraved you in the palm of my hands. Just turn back to me, and I will give you resurrection life!”
When Jesus appears to His disciples in a locked room in our scriptures for today, the first thing He does it show to them His hands and feet. And they immediately praise Him, their hearts are unlocked, for they know exactly who He is!
And I wonder if those words came into their minds at that moment:
“Look! I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands! Your walls are continually before me!”
For on Jesus’ hands remained the wounds he bore on their behalf, inscribe forever as a witness to His loving sacrifice, as the Holy One of God.
The disciples had been hiding out under lock and key the scriptures tell us, for fear of the Jewish officials. If they could kill Jesus, they could kill them too. They had denied, they knew their teacher and master. And now they cowered in that small room in Jerusalem, fearing for their lives, and wondering what to do next, how their lives could and would proceed from here.
But that locked door wasn’t the only thing under lock and key. Their hearts too had been closed to the truth of the scriptures, the Truth of Jesus’ message. In the terror of those last days, they had forgotten who He was, the power He held, the hope He had left with them, and the mission He had bid them to fulfill. Gripped with fear and unable to move from that room, they sat shiva for their friend who had died, and the mission that had died with Him.
When Jesus appeared before them, in that still locked room, and bore the visage of His love for them there on His hands and feet, their faith was renewed, and their hearts re-opened.
“Neither shall any man snatch them out of my hands,” John had said (10:28-29). Jesus had come back for them. God had remembered them. Their minds were opened to the Truth of Jesus’ words and His fulfillment of the scriptures. And they realized, the mission had not died, but was only beginning!
Then Jesus did something only God could do! He blew His life-giving breath upon them and brought their numb and paralyzed faith back to life again!
When the disciples emerged from that room, their lives would never be the same. They would move from disciple to apostle, from fear-stricken coward to bold and sure martyr for a faith that would last an eternity.
Never again would we forget Him. For His love, the love and covenant of God, is written on the palms of God’s hands! WE and all we have done to Him is written on the resurrected, forgiving, loving palms of God’s hands, as an ever-sure reminder of God’s eternal vow.
I like to call these nail marks, “grace marks.” For that is what they are. Once the marks of sin, even these have been resurrected and atoned into marks of grace. Forever inscribed upon the “body” of God.
And when we look at those grace marks, when we realize the depths of God’s love for us, and Jesus’ atoning message, the doors to our hearts are opened and unlocked, and we are bid entry into the heavenly kingdom of God!
Paul tells the Galatian church, “But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed.” (3:23)
And John witnessed too: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said, ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” (Rev 1:17-18)
And as we read today in Acts 5:17-25, even the bars of prisons could not hold the disciples from their life-giving mission. No lock could ever keep them from their proclamation!
For in His sacrifice, we have been healed. Jesus bears the wounds on the palms of God, as a reminder of His resurrecting grace, so that we might be made whole and live again. For He is our eternal salvation. Our names and the names of our forgiven sins are inscribed on the palms of His hands.
“Shalom Aleichem” says Jesus! Peace be with you! The song of the sabbath, the eternal sabbath had begun.
In the words of the age-old song by Charles Wesley: “Arise, my soul arise”….
Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off your guilty fears:
The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears:
Before the throne my Surety stands,
Before the throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.
He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev’ry race,
His blood atoned for ev’ry race
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.
Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me.
“Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry,
“forgive him, O forgive,” they cry,
“nor let that ransomed sinner die!”
My God is reconciled;
His pard’ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And “Father, Abba, Father!” cry.
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
Jesus’ First Appearances to His Disciples in a Locked Room (John 20:19-23)
Minor Text
The Story of Noah and the Mourning of Methuselah (Genesis 5-7)
The Sealing of the Garden (Genesis 3)
The Psalm of Jonah
Psalm 98: Sing to the Lord a New Song
Psalm 30: You Have Lifted Me from the Depths and Healed Me
Prayers” The Kaddish and the Tziduk Hadin
A Garden Locked and Opened (Song of Solomon 4:11-15)
The Song of Moses (Exodus 15)
The Song of Judah (Isaiah 26)