“My eyes have seen your salvation” – these words which Simeon spoke over the baby Jesus when Mary and Joseph brough him to the Temple, to give thanks to God for their newborn son, have been remembered throughout the centuries. They are part of the Nunc Dimittis, which has been said as part of evening prayers every day by clergy and laity since the 4th century.
These words carry such weight, and yet they are also a daily truth. Each and every day we see the evidence of God’s salvation – His healing touch, the way He brings wholeness and restoration. On the macro scale, we also look forward to the end of times, when that healing and wholeness and reconciliation will be applied to all things in all existence in all dimensions of time and space.
But there is a heresy here which easily slips in, and which needs to be named and rejected. That heresy is the one which says that all woundedness will disappear. It won’t. Christ’s own wounds did not disappear. The risen Christ bears wounds in his body. And our wounds – visible and invisible – have made and shaped us into what we are now.
A good friend of mine, Canon Timothy Goode, has written a book which is published tomorrow: Breaking Not Broken. I was talking to him yesterday, and I honestly can’t wait to read it. The image attached to this is by Alex Merry, entitled Kintsugi Christ, commissioned for this book as the cover.
Each time we come to the Eucharist, we break this bread to share in the Body of Christ. If we are broken, we need fixing. I don’t need to be fixed. Neither do you. We are loved by God, just as we are. We are called by God, just as we are. And as Christ forms us more and more into his image, into his Body, just remember, that Body has visible wounds – symbols of love and glory.
Revd. Talisker