Walking though Wounded
By Katie Ritsema-Roelofs
As a relatively new preacher, I have the rookie problem of bemoaning how much of the sermon study never makes the final cut. I still fight the urge to cram in as many details as possible like an over-stuffed suitcase. Because I’m convinced that 20+ hours of study can be shared in 20 minutes or less. This week the suitcase came undone. And for the first time, I was immensely grateful the congregation isn’t going to have to hear the details of my homiletical hissy fit.
Take a walk with me down that 7-mile-long journey away from Jerusalem. I opened up Luke 24 and dove into some quiet time with the familiar, Sunday after Easter story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. I was breezing along, making notes in margins, stopping in curious spots to open the Scripture study app for some language tips, and already my mind was thinking ahead to how to land the sermonic plane to beautifully rest at the Table. But it was as if all of a sudden, the lens through which I was looking at this text went dark - out of focus, maybe even fading to sepia or black and white.
Are you the ONLY one visiting Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that have happened? Jesus of Nazareth!! Long awaited now three days long-dead. We had hoped. But….
In my heart, these disciples transformed. They were no longer confused and grieving. They were red-hot angry and hopping mad. They were furious. They had hoped. They had believed. They had given their very lives to the cause. And what for? Jesus was dead. Believers were walking away in search of new lives and new careers. Bystanders gawked, grateful it wasn’t their mess to clean up. All of it was one big catastrophe unfolding before their dust-filled eyes. Then the traveler shows up. And after they pour out their hearts to a complete stranger who they were kind enough to make space for, that random sojourner has the audacity to call them out. “How foolish you are. And how slow to believe.” And then. Then he launches into Scripture. He tells them the stories they have heard their whole lives, invalidating their deep grief, one passage at a time. When we later hear these disciples hearts were burning, I lived in the electric moments of the seething burning of anger. How dare you throw Scripture in my face to tell me how wrong I am. How dare you throw out your Scriptural proof texts to prove your point. How dare you respond to my pain by calling me foolish and using the very thing I’ve given my life to as an instrument of destruction on my faith and on my calling. How dare you….
A wise colleague once told me that you need to preach from your scars - not your wounds. And I recognized the gaping, open wounds I have as a result of this last year of ministry in the Christian Reformed Church. They are real. They are painful. I can ignore them for periods of time. But then I make the mistake of reading the comments section. Or trolling the Pastor’s facebook page. Or trying to have really hard conversations with colleagues, with family members, in council rooms and pastoral care visits. And this re-opens, re-damages, re-injures. And this week, these wounds oozed out on the pages of my sermon study, locking me into a corner where there was no good news coming for the disciples, or for the people of God in the pews on Sunday morning. Because in this telling of the story, Jesus is the one doing the wounding. Jesus is calling them foolish and using the very words of Scripture to make them feel powerless and insignificant. Jesus is the source of their pain full stop.
I don’t need to tell you that this is not how the story goes, nor how the story ends. Not on the Emmaus road. Not in my office as I stare blankly at this google doc sermon. Not for you. Not for the CRC. Not for me. There are strangers to be welcomed. There is bread to be broken. There are others who need to know this good news - their very lives depend on it. So whether you find yourself wounded or whole, hopeless or hopeful, in despair or in delight… today may you find something of comfort in the presence of a Savior who knows what it is to preach wounded.
We will see our wounded Savior. We'll behold him face to face
And we'll hear our anguished stories sung as vict'ry songs of grace
For behold! I tell a myst'ry - at the trumpet sound we'll wake
Death is swallowed up in vict'ry! When we meet our King of Grace
Every year we thought was wasted. Every night we cried "How long?"
All will be a passing moment in our Savior's vict'ry song.
Eternal Weight of Glory (Wendell Kimbrough)
