Where the Wounds Are, God Is
The news of our world, near and far, is thick with anxiety, anger, and despair. It feels stifling.
In Jesus Christ, God has entered into the stifling atmosphere of human reality, the reality of sin, suffering, and death. He entered that reality to the uttermost – abandoned, tortured, and brutally executed. The God we know in and through Jesus has placed himself in solidarity in the concrete reality of human history with all its terror and tragedy. God is not aloof. God has taken on sin, suffering, and death in the incarnation and taken them all the way to the cross. All the way to the grave.
God bears the wounds. God bears the wounds of all of history. This God bears the wounds you and I have suffered as well as those we have inflicted. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during WWII, wrote, “The wounds of Christ are his credentials to the suffering race of [humanity] . . . Only a God in whose perfect Being pain has its place can win and hold our worship.”
But Jesus doesn’t simply bear the wounds. In the resurrection, he returns with the wounds transformed. This is not a case of “Let’s pretend that didn’t happen.” His torture and death were all too real, as is the torture and death that mark so much of the human story. A belief in immortality alone does not address this tragic story. But the Christian hope is not that we might simply escape from the unhappy reality of sin and suffering. It is not that it will all just be forgotten. Our hope is that sin and suffering will be transformed into resurrection glory. The wounds are testimony to that transformation.
When the risen Jesus entered the stifling atmosphere of the room where the disciples were locked in fear, guilt, and despair, he breathed the fresh air of new life into the room and into their hearts. He dispelled their fear with his peace, their guilt with his forgiveness, and their despair with the new hope. He rose from the grave bearing the promise of transformation and new creation—peace, justice, and life. And he sent them into a sinful, suffering world to be resurrection people, new creation people – people who bear witness to peace, forgiveness, and hope.
He breathes that same fresh air of his peace, forgiveness, and hope into our fear, guilt, and despair. He fills our suffering with his presence and the promise of transformation. And he calls us to be resurrection people living in anticipation of transformation. He breathes his Spirit upon us, enabling us to embody that promise.
Happy Easter,
Bishop Matthew Gunter
Bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Wisconsin
“God is not aloof. God has taken on sin, suffering, and death...and carried them all the way to the cross. All the way to the grave. ”
