When God came into the world, it was traumatic, argues George Pitcher. But Advent reminds us that now, more than ever, the Church needs the healing balm of Jesus - even if it is painful at first touch
Over the past few weeks, we clergy with a professional foot in the media have been responding to the resignation of Justin Welby over the John Smyth safeguarding scandal. I was invited onto Times Radio, where I described the affair as “shocking, shameful and depressing.” Afterwards, an old friend from Church communications contacted me to say: “We have to be careful that in beating ourselves up in public we don’t make it so bad that we can’t heal.” My response was simple: I replied that I’m less interested in healing at present than in “cauterising the wound.”
Anyone with a military or medical background will know that to cauterise is to burn the skin or flesh around a wound, often with a caustic substance, to seal it, stop bleeding and prevent infection. It is, in short, a deliberate infliction of further trauma in order that healing can begin.
It struck me that this might be a timely metaphor at the start of Advent.
The cauterizing of a divine wound
God’s work in the Incarnation, the coming of the light of Christ into human darkness, is a trauma, however much it’s prettified in Nativity scenes. It’s a trauma for his mother, Mary, and for the world and everyone in it, whether for or against him, and even, perhaps, for God himself, who entered into human suffering.
The birth and death of the Nazarene ares two sides of a wound that need cauterising
From the beginning of the story at Advent and Christmas to its climax on the Cross, upon which God bears suffering and death for the sake of humankind, trauma is central. The Nativity and the Cross, if you will, are the edges of the torn flesh of God, the wound of the world that is cauterised by these two events so that healing can begin.
This healing process was not, and is not, one that the world could undertake itself. Infected and haemorrhaging as our wounded world is, we need a divine act of cauterisation.That begins with the Advent promise and is completed with the last words of Christ from the Cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30). It’s God’s intervention alone. He chooses, as it were, to inflict the pain of cauterisation, which he bears for us.
Advent is an opportunity to allow God to cauterise our wounds and to start the healing process
This idea of the birth and death of the Nazarene as two sides of a wound that needs cauterising appears in the New Testament repeatedly. In Revelation, its author presages Advent in his initial greeting: “Grace and peace to you from he who is, and who was, and who is to come.” This is Advent as the “entry wound” in my metaphor. Then, almost immediately, John adds: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.” This is the Atonement, the Cross, the “exit wound”.
Similarly, in the Gospel of John, Jesus stands before Pontius Pilate and tells him: “My kingdom is not of this world…the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth” (John 18:37). Christ links his birth to his ultimate purpose, echoing the two sides of the divine wound God, in the gift of his sacrifice, cauterises.
Taking our wounds to the table
Advent offers an opportunity to allow God to cauterise our wounds all over again and start the healing process. It’s a penitential season in which we’re invited to bring any painful wound for healing, even if the initial offering up is likely to cause brief trauma.
We can do that at any time, but communion offers a particularly profound place to bring such wounds. This invitation extends to our own wounds, but also those of the abused, for example - and the Church that has harboured the abuse that caused them.
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