Proving what you say

Passage for reflection: Luke 24: 36b - 48 

How do you trust someone? How do you persuade yourself their story is credible? Life is full of experts who try to convince you they know what they are talking about. We usually judge people on whether they really know what they are talking about by how convinced we are they have immersed themselves in the area of life they are sharing with us. 

How do people trust those of us who are church? How do they persuade themselves our story is credible? People want to know we know what we are talking about and whether we are immersed in authentic, genuine, earthy Christianity that understands where they find themselves. It’s easy to be dismissed as shallow if we really can’t enter someone’s world and we offer them trite and unhelpful platitudes. Like Job in the Old Testament found, empty words and little idea about stuff will be challenged by God: “who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”

I remember a vicar in Brighton once telling me about a service he took one Sunday morning when mid sermon a man came in the church very vocally asking for help. One of the congregation got up to try and quieten him down as he was interrupting the worship. But this only made things worse. He yelled for everyone to hear; “You ha

haven’t got a clue. You haven’t got a ******* clue!” 

There’s a song that has the line in it “ I need to know that Christ can feel the need to touch and love and heal the world, including me.”

Although we have reached the third Sunday of Easter, the lectionary still has us on Easter evening. Luke has a Jesus coming to disciples like the other accounts but he emphasises Jesus being human. He has wounds, and he is hungry and he smells fish cooking. To airbrush crucifixion out of the story to make Easter prettier is not to show a credible Christ to a world that needs to know he knows something about being wounded. 

To know he knows what he is talking about helps us in our trust of him. 

Henri Nouwen painted Jesus as a wounded healer. He wrote in his book of that name “Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not “How can we hide our wounds?” so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but “How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?” When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.

Jesus is God’s wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed. Jesus’ suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love. As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.”

So how is the Church credible? By putting what we believe into action and by walking with people in their pain, entering the woundedness and helping people come out the other side of it. We mustn’t hide from real life. We need to admit to people times of our own vulnerability and give testimony to our wounds and then our healing. For me a wounded Jesus is worth following.

For a few years I was the minister at Ashington in West Sussex. I remember one evening arriving at Ashington with my projector bag and my laptop bag. There was a protest meeting in the hall about compost (don’t you love village life!) They thought I was there from the press to take their picture! "I am the minister of this church!" I exclaimed! We were in the church  - someone from the compost meeting said afterwards, "couldn't hear ourselves speak with all that singing in the church!" The community and the church didn’t interact. The village saw us a nice hall to hire. They didn’t think we had anything to offer them so we were just a noise interrupting their meeting. Of course the compost group and their like were the first to complain when the church had to close. 

The risen Jesus continues in real and vital relationship in the community of those who follow him. We have a real and vital relationship that transcends the limits of death, and that continues to be manifested in concrete acts of ministry, healing, teaching, learning, community compassion, and outreaching love.

And we are witnesses of it and it is real and it is to be trusted. Can people believe it through us or are we as relevant as I was in that chapel to folk who just needed a room to discuss compost?!