Communion Service Sermon by Pastor Dale Wolcott

March 23, 2002

(Scriptures quoted are from the New King James Version unless noted)

When God formed man from the dust of the ground, one of the master strokes of His creative genius was that incredibly useful, flexible tool, the human hand. Isaac Newton once said, "In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence."

One fourth of all the bones in your body are in your hands. It takes seventy separate muscles to operate each hand — twelve for your little finger alone. Yet there are no muscles at all in your fingers. They operate by remote control from the wrist & forearm, through a complex system of tendons, joints and ligaments.

The Bible says that when the Creator of all these marvels took our human form, He too had hands.

From the Gospels we can learn much about Jesus’ hands. They must have been rugged hands, calloused by hard work. The Bible says He was a "carpenter." The Greek word could also mean "stonemason." Just up the road from Jesus’ home town of Nazareth, the Romans built a fortress during the very time Jesus was in His teens or twenties. Jesus may well have cut, hauled and laid some of the stones still visible in ruins there today. Jesus’ hands knew what blisters felt like — and ragged fingernails, and slivers.

But there came a time when Jesus closed the carpenter shop and began using those hands in even more creative ways. The Bible says He "went about doing good." His hands were willing to touch the untouchable: lepers; "sinners;" even corpses. Luke tells how he once stopped a funeral by touching a casket. Jesus touched blind eyes...a mute tongue...deaf ears. His every touch brought life and healing.

Jesus also knew the emotional value of a touch. When the disciples wanted to keep the children at arm’s length, Jesus rebuked their insensitivity. The Bible says He drew the children close, "took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them." (Mark 10:16)

Then one day, in the prime of His manhood, the active, skillful, muscular, tender hands of Jesus were immobilized. He offered no resistance as they bound His hands in the Garden of Gethsemane. The next morning at Calvary, He did not struggle, as the thieves beside Him did, when they grabbed those sun-bronzed arms, those carpenter’s hands, and forced them against the rough-sawn timbers of the cross.

He could have struck the soldiers senseless without lifting a finger — as He’d done in the garden a few hours before; as He did at His resurrection a few hours later. But at the cross His hands were still and unresisting.

Dr. Paul Brand, a Christian hand surgeon, describes what happened to the hands of Jesus this way:

"Those hands that had done so much good were taken, one at a time, and pierced through with a thick spike. My mind balks at visualizing it.... Roman executioners drove their spikes through the wrist, right through the carpal tunnel that houses finger-controlling tendons and the median nerve. It is impossible to force a spike there without maiming the hand into a claw shape. And Jesus had no anesthetic as His hands were marred and destroyed." ["The Scars of Easter," Christianity Today, April 5, 1985, p. 21]

The Bible tells us that despite the horrors of the crucifixion, Jesus arose the third day with a glorified body. His resurrection promises that whatever pain we’re experiencing right now, the day is soon coming when He’ll give us glorious new bodies as well, if we put our trust in Him.

But when Jesus came out of the tomb with a glorified, perfect, spiritual body, and when He ascended to heaven, He took with Him one eternal reminder that He still is touched with the feeling of our infirmities: He still has the nail prints in His hands! (See John 20:25-27).

Through all eternity, as we "long enjoy the work of our hands" (Isa. 65:22), we will never forget that it was the work of Jesus’ hands that brought us there — and we will never tire of asking again and again the question framed by the prophet in Zechariah 13:6, "What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."