Reading: Romans 8:31-39 (GOD’S WORD Translation)
31What can we say about all of this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32God didn’t spare his own Son but handed him over to death for all of us. So he will also give us everything along with him. 33Who will accuse those whom God has chosen? God has approved of them. 34Who will condemn them? Christ has died, and more importantly, he was brought back to life. Christ has the highest position in heaven. Christ also intercedes for us. 35What will separate us from the love Christ has for us? Can trouble, distress, persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger, or violent death separate us from his love? 36As Scripture says:
“We are being killed all day long because of you.
We are thought of as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37The one who loves us gives us an overwhelming victory in all these difficulties. 38I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love which Christ Jesus our Lord shows us.[a] We can’t be separated by death or life, by angels or rulers, by anything in the present or anything in the future, by forces 39or powers in the world above or in the world below, or by anything else in creation.
God, we know that You walk beside us through all of life. Sometimes we wonder why it gets so hard. Show us what you want us to learn; heal us with Your Holy Spirit. And we will praise You now and forever. Amen
I stand before you today as a wounded healer—it would not always have been so—for many years, I was only wounded. I have learned over the years to engage in a daily walk to allow God to transform my pain to a healing walk that includes everyone of you here and many who are no longer with me either physically or geographically. I believe that God calls us to this journey of spiritual transformation and healing for one reason only—and that is to use our woundedness to heal others.
We all have wounds—it is not possible to go through life without accumulating quite a collection of hurts, both psychic and physical. Many of us are getting to the point where the doctor starts using the dreaded phrase “age related”. The first time I heard it, it was like the first time someone told me they loved the way my hair had grayed. I turned around to see who was standing behind me to see whom she was talking to—seeing no one, I suddenly realized that it was my gray hair she was admiring—funny how it didn’t look gray to me.
I believe for most of us, the challenge is not in identifying or even accepting life’s wounds, the challenge is in allowing God to transform both our wounds and us to change our perspective from wounded people who are hurt and hurting to wounded people who heal others. Now transformation does not always come easy—most of us have not been taught to embrace our woundedness. Even as children we are expected to hop right up and start playing again.
And our children learn that message well. There was a time when my son and I were out riding bikes through the streets not far from where we lived. He, for who knows what reason, suddenly cut in front of me, causing my front tire to hit his rear tire. That sent me flying over the handlebars and I landed on my helmet, my knees and my ribcage. Yes, it was a mess! He rushed back to untangle me from my bike and then proceeded to tell me, “Come on, Mom, walk it off!” Thinking how inappropriate it would be for me to strangle my six foot tall son in front of the crowd that had now grown, I said, through gritted teeth, “Go get the car!” A week later, I went back to work, and ten years later, I still won’t ride bikes with my now 31-year-old son. I think it may be time for me to let that wound heal…
Real transformation of our truly significant wounds only comes from doing the hard work of understanding and embracing our hurt, being willing—let me say that again—being willing to allow God to transform us and then getting on with our ministry to bring God’s healing to a broken world. What we know for sure is that there are more broken people in this world than there are healed ones and that it is up to us to do our part to change the percentages. This reminds us of the very, very old story, one which I know every one of you knows of the little boy walking on the beach throwing back the starfish that had washed up on the shore—hundreds and hundreds of them were being washed ashore from the agitated sea. An adult (leave it to an adult to trivialize what a child is doing) comes along and says, “little boy, what are you doing, what difference can you make? You can’t possibly save them all!” Barely missing a beat, the little boy throws another starfish towards the deeper water, and says, “I made a difference to that one!”
And so, how can God use us as wounded healers to make a difference in the lives of those we touch every day? We need look no farther than to the life of Jesus and the life of His apostle, Paul. For these two men were both wounded and healers. They both experienced life as full human beings, with pain and suffering and hardship. And yet, in their vulnerability came their greatest strength. Henri Nouwen, one of my spiritual mentors wrote this: “When we think about the people who have given us hope and have increased the strength of our soul, we might discover that they were not the advice givers, warners or moralists, but the few who were able to articulate in words and actions the human condition in which we participate and who encourage us to face the realities of life.” Does this not describe both Jesus and Paul as well as some of the folks who have given you hope. Nouwen wrote these words in a book called Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. It is one of the books that we would do well to include in our study of significant spiritual books.
For those of you who have experience with 12 step programs, this has been determined to be the reason they are so effective. When a fellow human being shares their “experience, strength, and hope”, it touches the hearts and lives of others because their story could be my story—I am not alone.
Support groups—groups of folks who struggle with the same illness, circumstance or history as others in the group—lend a “been right where you are and done just what you did” element to the friendship and listening that is so vital to our very beings. Celtic spirituality, an increasing interest of mine, talks of a “soul friend”—an anamchara—who is our spiritual “best friend” and guide—someone who knows our soul well because they know their own soul well. What if Open Circle MCC became a circle of “soul friends” to each other—where spiritual journeys abound in a safety net of sister and fellow travelers.
We know and we celebrate every week that Jesus is our “soul friend” as no other can be our soul friend—that He knows intimately what it feels like to be tempted, to be betrayed, to be injured, to be wounded beyond human comprehension. And yet, Jesus shows us in every way that not only did He survive and thrive but that we, His followers will as well. And we all want to stand up and sing with Gloria Gaynor “I will survive!”
Paul says it in our reading for today: What will separate us from the love Christ has for us?...I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love which Christ Jesus our Lord shows us. We can’t be separated by death or life, by angels or rulers, by anything in the present or anything in the future, by forces or powers in the world above or in the world below, or by anything else in creation.
The older translations say: “In all these things we are MORE than conquerors!” More than conquerors indeed. But lest you think that I am glossing over the pain and struggle involved in moving from wounded to wounded healer—let me return to the story of my son and the bicycle accident. Is it not true that most of the time we tell ourselves to “walk it off”, to shake off the fear and anxiety or even the real physical pain that seemingly strikes us from nowhere? I believe that if we truly follow the way of Jesus, we will allow ourselves the necessary time in Gethsemane and beyond in order to allow God to transform our woundedness into healing and a source of life for others. It is not wise to “shake off” or to hide our pain and struggles, not from each other and certainly not from ourselves. Because to do so has at least two negative consequences—first, we will simply never heal ourselves—secondly, because we cannot afford to let anyone know of our pain, we will wall ourselves off from our hurting sister and brother, lest their pain re-ignite our own. We cannot be a source of healing unless we have at least opened ourselves to the prospect of being healed ourselves.
And so we are vulnerable, vulnerable to ourselves, vulnerable to each other and vulnerable to God. There are times when I go home after preaching and wonder if I have shared too much, showed you too much of who I am—and yet, I believe that the best of what I have to give to you, just as the best of what you have to give to each other comes from the willingness to reveal the truth about our own struggles and journeys and “come clean” as it were. This is, indeed, the difficult work of growing in a faith community. We have not always been safe just because we found ourselves in “church” and some of you may struggle to feel safe here. But my prayer for all of us is that we will grow together as “more than conquerors” as we lovingly hold those among us each week who seek the loving, healing arms of God. Amen and amen!
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