"The Wounded Healer"
Sermon Presented July 9, 2006
II Corinthians 12:2-10
Have you ever stopped to wonder what motivates a powerful movement or an innovative program? Why is research conducted to combat AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, heart disease, mental health disorders, and breast cancer? What is the motivation for establishing support groups for people trying to overcome alcoholism, gambling, smoking, overeating, and other addictive disorders? Who is most passionate about helping those who suffer from these conditions, if not those who have suffered or family members of a sufferer? Henri Nouwen calls those who allow their compassion to touch others "wounded healers".
Those most affected by civil rights abuses raise awareness for the rest of the nation and the world. Those who can't enter public buildings because of physical handicaps push for handicapped accessibility. Those who lost children because of a drunken driver join Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The participants at Gilda's Club are those affected by cancer. Those who are recovering from an addiction join a support group focusing on their particular addiction for their own benefit and the benefit of others. We become active in a cause when we have a personal stake in the action - or when our hearts are touched by a need, as is the case with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet. Through our weakness, we find our strength - our voice.
In our text - a letter written by Paul to the church in Corinth, Paul responds to the negative attacks made against him by people he calls super apostles. These itinerant preachers are attempting to take over the Corinthian congregation by belittling Paul and claiming that they have a special link to God.
The last four chapters of this letter called II Corinthians are Paul's counter-attacks against those who want to discredit him and his teachings. The attacks hit a nerve because Paul has a disability - a problem - a thorn (or as another translation states) - a stake in the flesh. If he were close to God, surely God would heal him. I'm reading from II Corinthians 12:2-10.
This is part of Paul's direct response to the charges made against him by outside opponents who threaten his leadership and influence. These challengers authenticate their own ministry by appealing to signs, wonders, visions, revelations, and other demonstrations of power. Paul has never done this.
In fact, he violently disagrees with this means of validation - believing he should be judged by his words and actions and not his mystical experiences. However, he decides to play by their rules and boasts about his own mystical experience 14 years previously. Even though Paul speaks in the third person, there's no doubt he's speaking of his own experiences. He's not sure whether or not he physically went to Paradise, but he heard astounding things that he could not repeat. The experience was powerful and real! However, he doesn't believe this experience validates his ministry. He believes the validation comes from how he lives his life as a follower of Jesus. After sharing this experience, he tells them that his "thorn in the flesh" - his infirmity - was given to him to keep him humble.
No one knows today what that "thorn in the flesh" was, but we can be sure that the church at Corinth understood what he was talking about. There are many conjectures - among which are epilepsy, stuttering, stomach and psychological problems, and problems with his eyesight. Whatever it was, Paul begs to get rid of it, but God tells him that God's grace is sufficient. Because of Paul's problem, he relies more fully on God.
This must have been a difficult message for Paul to hear. He asks for healing and receives the same message - three times - that the affliction will remain. However, when Paul finally accepts it, he realizes that God is holding him, guiding him, and saving him from spiritual pride. Paul becomes a wounded healer.
This image of "wounded healer" is to be the model for our ministry. The Christian who assumes the role of super saint - one who has nothing but blessings in his or her life - isn't touched by the world's pain. We recognize our call when grace comes in the midst of our persistent or humiliating infirmities. "My grace is enough for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness."
Max Cleland, the head of the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter and a triple amputee from the Vietnam War, discovered this truth. At the end of one of his speeches, he quoted a poem attributed to an injured Civil War soldier:
I asked God for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for help that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need for God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered.
I among all men am most richly blessed.
Cleland and the author of that poem, like the apostle Paul, are wounded healers who depend on God's sufficient grace.
Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the greatest preachers of the 20th century found that his deep depression, mental breakdown, and hospitalization at a sanitarium were the avenue to a deepened ministry and the insight to write a book on prayer. He said of his experience: "I learned to pray, not because I had adequately argued out prayer's rationality, but because I desperately needed help from a greater power than my own. I learned that God, much more than a theological proposition, is an immediately available resource." Fosdick was a wounded healer who discovered that God's grace was sufficient and perfected in his weakness.
Henri Nouwen wrote in his book The Wounded Healer:
Perhaps the main task of the minister (and we are all ministers) is to prevent people from suffering for the wrong reasons. Many people suffer because of the false supposition on which they have based their lives. That supposition is that there should be no fear or loneliness, no confusion or doubt…. (But ministry) does not allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness. It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts.
…A shared pain is no longer paralyzing but mobilizing, when understood as a way to liberation. When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope (p. 93.)
My grace is enough for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
We aren't called to be super apostles who are oblivious to our own wounds and blind to the wounds of others. God calls us to be wounded healers. However, this isn't a call to go around looking for suffering, as if the more we suffer the more righteous we are. Neither is it a call to parade our suffering before others. It is a call to get in touch with our own woundedness - our own humanity - so that we might share more deeply in the woundedness of others. It's a call to go to those who weep over their own brokenness and offer them the healing that God can give. When we are willing to admit our weakness, we can get close enough to those who are wounded so that God's grace can flow from our heart to theirs.
Our wounds neither qualify nor disqualify us from God's service. Rather as we bear them in the grace of Jesus, they become vessels of grace and we become vessels of grace. They become opportunities to hear and to bear and to pass along God's answer to Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness."
God doesn't want us to neglect our strengths, but if God depended only on our strengths, much of God's work would remain undone. God uses our entire being - both our strengths and weaknesses.
Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded, whether physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. Instead of trying to hide our wounds so that we aren't embarrassed by them, we need to use them in the service of others. When our wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing, we will become healers.
Jesus is God's wounded healer. Through his wounds we are healed. Jesus' suffering and death brought joy and life - not at the time, but later. His humiliation brought glory, and his rejection brought a community of love. As followers of Jesus our wounds can bring healing to others. We can't by-pass the cross and rely on ecstatic experience, pious behavior and doctrinal allegiance.
Paul ministered to people in the name of Christ with a stake penetrating his flesh, and he heard the laughter of the super-apostles telling him he wasn't a real minister. But in the silence, God spoke to Paul and said: My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness. And it was. And it is.
(Sources: Strength in Weakness by Stephen Shoemaker, The Wounded Healer and Bread for the Journey by Henri Nouwen.)
