Glorious Wounds
His smooth smiling face may have belied a deeper conflict but none was apparent. Jim responded to my story of sexual brokenness and Jesus’ healing with simply this: ‘My [homo]sexuality has been positive for me. But I can see why you needed Jesus. You were so wounded.’
When I suggested that ‘we are all wounded and that’s precisely why God allowed Himself to be wounded for us’, Jim begged to differ: ‘I understand God differently. I consider myself deeply spiritual, not Christian.’
He did not mean to be condescending. Jim was just being honest. No apparent wounds, no need for the Crucified God. I appreciate that he did not lump Jesus into his ‘Oprah-fied’ gospel. The truth is: the cross remains a scandal for persons who want to control their own destinies with a little help from God, rather than persons whose help is God.
How did I or any of us come to that place of surrender? I believe that it has something to do with the mercy that meets us in another person, someone who somehow warrants our trust. In the light of love, we are freed to admit: ‘I have needs for love that I cannot manage and that another person cannot satisfy.’
Love alone frees us to lay down sleek defenses and show our wounds. Every week Annette and I gather with a group of men and women who do just that. Mercy drew us and now frees us to be poor together. Out of that poverty—the halting and at times shameful exposure of what needs to be cleaned and set and protected from further infection—we are becoming rich.
God is glorious among us. The Risen Christ, His wounds yet visible, is healing us from the inside out. Around the cross with these ones is heaven-on-earth. Nowhere I would rather be.
I keep praying and waiting for Jim to be among us. He needs us. He just does not know it yet. Maybe my presence will draw him yet, though I pray for others more winsome than I to do the trick. Regardless, I will keep reaching to him in love. May mercy flow like a river from our wounds, clean and glorious.
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