I function a priest in an Anglican church in Dallas, and I even have the privilege and responsibility of pastoring many individuals who’ve experienced pain by the hands of a church. Some in our congregation have been outright abused. Some have had their faith shaken by the autumn of a frontrunner. Some have been pushed out of congregations for asking legitimate questions.
And while church hurt may not at all times be one of the best term to call and collect all these different experiences, it’s undeniable that many in my very own congregation have suffered harm from the body of Christ. There is a distinction between a church hurting someone and the church hurting someone, especially when it comes to the healing and reconciliation that must occur locally and individual to individual. But it’s just as necessary to border our experiences of pain throughout the church as a complete.
After all, Paul insists that Christ has one body, the church, being built up in love into the fullness of Christ our head (Eph. 4:4, 15–16). He also insists that when one member of the body suffers, all suffer (1 Cor. 12:26). A sturdy view of the church as Christ’s body must embrace each the integrity and health of that body and the pain that body experiences from its own members.
In hearing the stories of pain in our congregation, our church has felt the responsibility of caring for these people well. My wife, a licensed counselor, and I wanted to deal with these hurts in a setting where we could acknowledge their wounds and check out to assist them take a meaningful step toward healing. So we recently hosted a weekend seminar called “The Pain and Promise of Christian Community.”
We knew that we couldn’t take care of all of the complexities of each story in our time together, but we could make a start. We discerned that naming the suffering was a kick off point. We sensed that for people to embrace again the promise of Christian community, they first needed to acknowledge and have others acknowledge their pain. In our time together, the image of the church as Christ’s wounded body held inside it each the pain and the promise of Christian community.
Christ’s church suffers in some ways. Some of this pain, just like the pain of want and persecution, comes from outside the church. Some of this pain, nevertheless, like corruption and schism, comes from inside. Some wounds, in other words, are self-inflicted.
We must acknowledge the injuries that Christ’s body can inflict on itself and in addition acknowledge the way in which those wounds can fester and go unhealed. So too must we acknowledge that the pain of the wound is usually compounded by denial and dismissal, and sometimes by the protection of those that inflicted the initial wound.
Denial can occur at the person level, where we’re reluctant to confess the hurt because that admission appears like it can cost an excessive amount of. But to really heal, people must specify who hurt them and what happened. As Michelle Van Loon writes, “It’s necessary to discover the source and scope of the hurt.”
Denial also happens on the institutional level. A more robust view of the church as Christ’s body might help us confront institutional problems and conflict as we higher understand that Christ is constructing his church, and the gates of hell is not going to prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). In other words, a frontrunner may fall or a congregation may dissolve—and these aren’t any small things—but within the scope of history, Christ will construct his church. He will restore his body.
Just as denial and dismissal of the wound compounds the initial wound, so too do easy explanations. In the face of pain experienced by the hands of the church, well-meaning congregants often trot out coffee cup verses and Sunday school platitudes. Though they could mean no harm, they find yourself becoming like Job’s friends, who cling to absolutes and simple explanations when Job is enduring incomprehensible suffering (Job 2:11).
Such careless comfort is usually a mode of self-protection. After all, if Job’s friends are unsuitable about Job’s suffering, then they’re unsuitable about their view of God and reality too. To acknowledge Job’s suffering in full would have been too costly for them, in order that they settle for his or her worn-out understandings of righteousness. In the top, the Lord confronts these false comforters, telling them that they “haven’t spoken the reality about me, as my servant Job has” (42:7–9).
Acknowledging the wound, moving past denial and dismissal, and resisting easy explanations—none of this is straightforward. But a wound denied can’t be healed. When the pain comes from contained in the body, in some sense, it hurts more and is harder to acknowledge.
How can we learn to call this pain? By turning our gaze to Christ’s own wounded body on the cross.
On Good Friday especially, we turn our gaze to the person of sorrows who bears our affliction. The paradox of our faith is that in his wounding is our healing, in order necessary because it is for the church to acknowledge our own wounds, it’s much more crucial to take a look at the one who bears our wounds in his wounding.
Christ’s wounds hold not only the promise of our healing but additionally the mystery of the church’s origin. As the early church meditated on the Crucifixion, they turned their attention to a specific verse, John 19:34, which records that “one in all the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.”
In meditating on this verse, many within the early church insisted that from the wounded side of Christ, the church was born. Origen (A.D. 185–254) captures this conviction in a potent phrase: “From the wound in Christ’s side has come forth the church, and he has made her his bride.”
The church was born from a wound. The early church saw the last Adam hanging heavy on the cross within the sleep of death, but from his side, his wound, a recent Eve was brought forth—the church. Born as we’re from that wound, the church journeys with Christ through Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. In his passion is our own path and our own healing.
The sequence of those days reminds us that the form of Christ’s victory is a U. He begins his descent on the cross, and in death slides into the grave. In the darkness of death, his journey doesn’t turn upward until the bottom point is reached. The trough of that U reminds us that his solidarity with us is absolute, extending even into the bottom reaches of death. But the plummet downward suddenly swings upward with the momentum of affection. He bursts forth in victory, yet when he emerges, he still bears his wounds.
In learning to contemplate the injuries of the crucified Christ, we may also learn to gaze on the church’s own wounded body, not because our wounds will affect our healing but because the top of the church is the Man of Sorrows who has borne our pain and who has been raised up out of death. By his wounds we’re healed (Is. 53:5). By his wound the church was born.
As my very own love for Christ’s church has deepened, so too has my sadness on the harm it’s able to, especially to its own members. How can we learn to carry the brightness of this love next to the darkness of our collective pain? Many have helpfully highlighted the ability of lament within the healing process. In lament, prayers that when seemed off-limits suddenly articulate our pain and isolation within the presence of God. But there may be one other form of prayer that may aid in our healing—praying for the church because the church, praying as his body for his body.
Before he dies, Christ prays for all who would imagine in him (John 17:20–21). In praying for his body, Christ models how we ought to hope as well. Those of us who’ve been joined to Christ’s church must also pray for his church. We never pray for the church in a detached or disinterested way. We pray for the church, as the church, inside the church. Having been buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life, we pray as those that have been incorporated into his body.
But how can we pray in a way that acknowledges each the pain and the promise of this body? A prayer by William Laud, the Seventeenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr, collected in The Book of Common Prayer captures well the two-sided nature of the body of Christ:
Gracious Father, we pray to your holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it’s corrupt, purify it; where it’s in error, direct it; where in anything it’s amiss, reform it. Where it is correct, strengthen it; where it’s in want, provide for it; where it is split, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior. Amen.
At our seminar, we ended our time by praying this prayer together, with one small change. We added the phrase “where it’s wounded, heal it.” It was a way of acknowledging the truth of our pain, but additionally acknowledging the one who can heal that pain. In so doing, we turned our eyes from our own wounds to his.
To pray because the church, for the church, throughout the church means we pray as a body asking for its own healing, as a bride asking for the bridegroom to scrub us with the water of the Word.
We pray because the church, for the church, within the church as an act of hope, knowing that the wound of our birth was also raised up through resurrection. Even now, it’s a wound that Christ bears as an indication of victory over sin, shame, and death.
Christopher Myers (PhD, Durham) is the curate of St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church in Dallas. He blogs at The Road Between Here and There.
