Until I Touch the Wounds

If we are to become Easter people, people of the resurrection, people walking in the way of Jesus, we must learn from the witness of wounds, the wounds of Jesus and the wounds of the marginalized. It is only then that we can learn to become the church, the people we are called to be. As Yolanda Pierce says in her book, The Wounds are the Witness: Black Faith Weaving Memory into Justice and Healing, “If we are to love Jesus, we have to love the man with the still-healing wounds and not just the conquering hero. We have to love the broken Jesus and not just the triumphant one. Likewise, we have to love wounded people and wounded places. To work for flourishing and liberation in a broken world, we cannot look away from crucified flesh or be repulsed by the wounds” (144). For Christians in the United States, this means seriously reckoning with the wounds of Indigenous Americans and enslaved African people. It means understanding that the wounds that are continually inflicted on people of color in our country must be tended in order for all our wounds to be healed. In this Easter season sermon series, we will take the time to draw close to Jesus, our wounded healer, and learn to carefully tend both our own wounds and the wounds of those who’ve been marginalized, recognizing that the liberation of all God’s people is bound together in the healing of all our wounds.