be not afraid

The archetypal encounter between doubting Thomas and the Risen Jesus (John 20:19-28) is not really a story about believing in the fact of the resurrection but a story about believing that someone could be wounded and also resurrected at the same time! That is quite a different message and still desperately needed. “Put your finger here,” Jesus says to Thomas (John 20:27). Like Christ, we are all indeed wounded and resurrected at the same time. In fact, this might be the primary pastoral message of the Gospel.

                                                                                  Richard Rohr

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Here we are

Still

Post-resurrection people

Filled with such weird ideas about what it all means

For some the resurrection is about rescue

God inflicting punishment on the Sacred Son and removing it from us

Or at least some of us

For some resurrection is about domination

God’s in control

God always wins

For some resurrection is about transformation

God lifts us up

Raises us to new ways of loving and living

And yet, and yet

The world remains

Hate filled, violent, grasping

And we are wounded

We are all wounded

There is no escape

not even for the incarnate one escaped

pierced and afflicted by the world

crucified by all the sins of human kind

nailed to the cross by a world

which would not let go of its power

its wealth

but Jesus raised was Jesus wounded

still pierced

the first born

and we too

are the resurrected wounded

lifted up into a new way of doing life

but still carrying with us

the pain of the world

still touched by the hate and violence

still caught up in our own fear, and need

it does not make us any less resurrected

the end is sure

we have been handed back to God

we belong to God

and our new found communion with God

will some day become union with God

we are God filled

God powered people

But we carry our wounds with us

We do not need to be afraid of the depths and breadths of our own lives

of our failures

our mistakes

of those dark moments when we wound ourselves

or are wounded by others

for God works in our struggles and pain

and in our struggles and pain

teaching

comforting

resurrecting

giving us the ability to reach out

wounded as we are

to a shattered and fragmented world

enabling us to touch not only our own wounds but the wounds of other

enabling us to go into hell

into the dark places of life

and come out again

in love

enabling us to echo the message of Jesus

be not afraid