The Wounded Christ
If you can't believe in God, touch his wounds.
If you don't believe in Christ:
Touch his wounds.
The wounds of a man who was tortured and executed.
In his wounds he suffers-
By us.
With us.
For us.
He suffers by our hands. We, in our sin and brokenness, inflict his wounds. We put Christ on the cross.
He suffers with us. This is a God who enters into our suffering and bears it alongside us. I don't have an answer for why there's so much wrong with our world. I don't have a solution to the evil we see. Believing in God doesn't erase our problems, embodied or intellectually. But I do know that Christ doesn't leave us to suffer alone.
He suffers for us. He bridges the gap between brokenness and healing. He skin is ripped to shreds at the whipping post. He is dressed in mocking robes and made to carry the instrument of his execution despite the jeers and delight of a mob. He is murdered and sacrificed. He's stabbed and drained. And he does all of this-why?
Christians often jump to the resurrection from here. But I want you to consider those three liminal days. Those days when Christ was dead in the tomb. For his followers, this was their teacher, their Christ, the one they hoped in beyond anything else- stone dead. No if, and, or buts.
Even when word reached the disciples that he might- somehow, someway, be alive again, the depth of their loss overruled their hope. They didn’t want to be burned or deceived. Not again.
In the gospel of John, Thomas said, "I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side."
Maybe you don't want a lofty sky God who flippantly whims right and wrong. And that's okay.
What about this God? The wounded Christ?
Two thousand years removed from the death of Christ, the world isn't that different. He was hated by the powerful, denied justice by the government. Look at the world around you! Consider your own heart. Tell me you don't see the same brokenness and suffering today. Can you tell yourself honestly you don't see it in yourself?
Again in John, chapter 20 verses 26-27, we read that, "The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”
The wounded Christ is real.
If you don’t believe- if you can't believe- if it's too absurd or painful or uncomfortable or irrelevant- for just a moment put those things aside.
Touch his wounds.
This is a man who suffered by your hand, with you, and for you. He willfully chose this. You were worth it. Julian of Norwich wrote, “For I am sure if there had been no one else but me to be saved, God would have done all that he has done for me. And so should every soul confidently believe about his lover- forgetting, if he might, all creatures, and thinking that God has done for him all that he has done.”
What kind of God would die for you? Touch his wounds, and taste and see that he is good.