Resurrecting Wounds

1. Resurrection Reimagined: Wounds Persist, They Don't Disappear

Is life, following “death,” improved life?

Trauma's enduring impact. The book challenges traditional Christian notions of resurrection as a triumphant overcoming of death, proposing instead a vision where wounds persist and shape life. In a "posttraumatic age," death and life are not sequential but simultaneous, entangled realities. This perspective is crucial for understanding contemporary suffering, where trauma often "returns or remains," obstructing engagement with the world.

Beyond mere survival. While acknowledging that life can never be restored to its previous condition after trauma, the concept of "afterlife" or "ongoingness" suggests more than just survival. It points to a reworking of life, where the marks of death remain, but new forms of life arise. This demands a theological language that accounts for ruptures without succumbing to despair, focusing on how people refigure their lives given their traumatic experiences.

Resurrecting amid death. The core argument is that resurrection is not about life overcoming death, but about life resurrecting amid the ongoingness of death. The returning wounds of Jesus, as depicted in the Gospel of John, become a central figure for this new expression of life. This re-envisioning links Christian promises to the realities of trauma, suggesting that resurrection is about life marked by wounds, yet recreated through them.

2. The Erasure of Wounds in Traditional Theology (Calvin's Example)

But if any person should infer from this, that Christ has still the wounded side and the pierced hands, that would be absurd; for it is certain that the use of the wounds was temporary, until the Apostles were fully convinced that he was risen from the dead.

Calvin's discomfort. John Calvin, a pivotal figure in Protestant theology, exemplifies the historical tendency to erase or minimize the significance of Christ's wounds post-resurrection. He viewed the wounds as merely instrumental, temporary proofs to convince "dull" or "obstinate" disciples like Thomas, rather than enduring marks of Christ's glorified body. For Calvin, true faith stemmed from hearing the Word, not from sensual experience.

Wounds as a problem. Calvin's interpretation was driven by concerns that emphasizing the wounds could lead to "monstrous" speculations about Christ's body, support Catholic "material piety" (like transubstantiation), or undermine Christ's full divinity (Arian claims). He strategically omitted or downplayed biblical verses that highlighted the physical, ghostly, or tactile aspects of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances, preferring a vision of Christ ascending to glory, unburdened by earthly marks.

A woundless ascension. For Calvin, Christ's glorified body in heaven must be unmarked by human limitation, aligning with a triumphant, heavenly vision of the afterlife. This theological move, while aiming to secure belief in Christ's divinity, inadvertently forecloses a space for understanding how wounds might persist and be transformed within life. It creates a "woundless ascension" that disconnects resurrection from the ongoing realities of suffering.

3. Macrina's Scar: A Model of Embodied, Communal Healing

Do not pass over the greatest of the miracles of the saint.

A different kind of mark. Gregory of Nyssa's account of his sister Macrina's scar offers a counter-narrative to the erasure of wounds. This scar was not a direct result of a visible wound but a mark of healing from an internal mass, revealed only after her death. It signifies "divine consideration" and a healing process involving Macrina's prayerful tears, earth, and her mother Emmelia's touch, creating a "pharmakon" or balm.

Resurrection as present healing. The scar challenges the timing of resurrection, suggesting it's not solely an afterlife event but something already "threading" within life. It's a "scarred joy of life," testifying to a transformation that occurs through ordinary practices of care and connection, rather than through sacrificial suffering. This vision disrupts traditional interpretations of Christ's wounds as solely redemptive through death.

Communal "enwombing." The scar scene, particularly when paired with the soldier's wife's story of Macrina's healing touch, refigures the Johannine resurrection narrative. It highlights women's agency and communal "enwombing"—a continuous bearing and companionship that weaves together shared flesh. This offers a feminist theological alternative to redemptive suffering, where healing emerges from interconnectedness and valuing life, rather than from the glorification of wounds.

4. Racial Trauma: Surfacing America's Hidden Wounds

The deep wound of our racial history has never passed—no one in America lives without it.

The hidden wound of racism. Wendell Berry's concept of the "hidden wound" describes racism as a deep, complex injury embedded within individuals and collective life, often unacknowledged but powerfully shaping the present. This wound is not merely historical but actively persists, surfacing in contemporary racialized violence. Christianity, Berry argues, has often acted as a "soothing bandage," covering over these wounds rather than facilitating their healing.

"Diseased social imagination." Willie Jennings extends this critique, arguing that modern Christian theology, born from colonial practices, often sanitizes its origins and perpetuates a "diseased social imagination." This leads to a disconnect between the violence at the heart of the Christian story and racialized violence, preventing white Christians from truly "seeing" or "feeling" the ongoing "crosses of history."

The crooked room. Melissa Harris-Perry's "crooked room" metaphor illustrates how systemic racism distorts perception, making it difficult for black women to "stand upright" and for anyone to "see straight." The Upper Room scene, re-read through this lens, becomes a space where Jesus' displayed wounds confront the disciples with their own misrecognition and complicity in historical harms, demanding a surfacing of truths that have been suppressed.

5. Veteran Healing: Collective Engagement with Invisible Wounds

Soul is the part you don’t understand.

Beyond the soldier-savior trope. Jonathan Ebel's "G.I. Messiahs" highlights how American civil religion casts soldiers as "soldier-saviors," embodying the nation's ideals through sacrifice. This narrative, while honoring service, often idealizes suffering and neglects the "messy remainder" of veterans' post-war experiences, including "invisible wounds" like PTSD and moral injury. It demands a triumphant return that often covers over complex struggles.

Warriors Journey Home (WJH). This Ohio-based veterans' group offers a counter-narrative, emphasizing collective healing through "circles" that include both veterans (warriors) and civilians (Stronghearts). WJH reclaims the term "warrior" to restore honor and communal responsibility for war's aftermath. Their practices, blending Christian and Seneca traditions, create a sacred space for truth-telling and emotional release.

Lost souls and collective healing. WJH's use of "soul" language, particularly "my soul left me in Vietnam," points to a deeper, communal dimension of trauma. It suggests that souls can be lost, not just individually, but also through the lingering presence of fallen comrades or unaddressed "unfinished business." The circle becomes a "crucible of safety" where these lost souls can be acknowledged and healing can occur, not through individual effort, but through collective witness and shared presence.

6. The Upper Room: A Site for Touching, Breathing, and Re-forming Community

After he said this he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Misrecognition and repeated peace. In the Johannine Upper Room, Jesus' initial display of wounds is met with immediate rejoicing, suggesting the disciples quickly integrate his return into their familiar expectations. His repeated "Peace be with you" implies their "seeing" is misguided, a failure to truly register the depth of his wounds or the fear that still grips them. This highlights a "diseased social imagination" that struggles to confront difficult truths.

Breath as reanimation. Jesus then breathes on them, saying, "Receive a holy spirit." This act, linked to the breath of life in Genesis, signifies a reanimation at the most fundamental level. In a context of fear and lockdown, breath becomes short; Jesus' breath re-sources them, enabling them to leave the confined room and engage with the world. This "holy spirit" is a memory-bearer, carrying forward the past not to be relived, but to be addressed.

Touching wounds, confronting self. Thomas' demand to "see and touch" the wounds is not simply about belief, but a forceful, almost violent, insistence on control. Jesus' invitation to "plunge your hand in my side" confronts Thomas with the force of his own demand, exposing the insidious logic of his desire to penetrate and possess. This encounter is a call to a different kind of engagement: to touch wounds not to verify, but to participate in a collective process of healing and truth-telling, dismantling the "crooked room" of distorted perception.

7. "Hurt Goes to Hurt": Wounds as Portals for Shared Healing

My hurt knows your hurt, and it goes to it.

Wounds as communicable. The phrase "hurt goes to hurt," coined by Shianne Eagleheart, describes a profound phenomenon within the WJH circles: the pain of one person's wound reveals and connects to the unacknowledged wounds of another. This is not about empathy or shared experience, but a deeper, almost somatic recognition where one's own pain is surfaced through witnessing another's.

Unearthing hidden wounds. Stronghearts (civilians) in WJH often discover they carry wounds they were unaware of, or didn't know how to name, until participating in the circle. These might be intergenerational traumas, the guilt of not serving, or the lingering effects of living with veterans. The circle becomes a space where these "invisible wounds" are brought to light, not to be compared or judged, but to be acknowledged and tended.

Collective attunement. This communicability of wounds fosters a collective attunement to pain, forging new routes of healing. The circle, with its rituals and shared presence, creates a container where individual wounds become portals for collective transformation. It challenges the notion of isolated suffering, revealing an interconnectedness where healing is not a solo endeavor but a shared, reciprocal process.

8. "Razors and Doves": The Painful Process of Rebirth

And then all of a sudden, you see the sun, and it’s dropping on the leaf where the moisture is glistening. And this is the place of the new day and the new vision, and this lightness you feel like there’s release.

Confronting internal destruction. Shianne Eagleheart uses the vivid imagery of "razors" and "doves" to describe the arduous process of healing from deep trauma. "Razors" represent the internal, self-inflicted damage and destructive forces that cut a person from the inside, destroying the soul. The healing work involves the painful process of these razors breaking the surface of the skin to be removed, a confrontation with one's own "death."

The promise of release. This painful "death" is a necessary precursor to rebirth. The "doves" symbolize the release, the newness, and the lightness that follow the removal of the razors. It's an experience of profound relief and a "new day and new vision" that one might not have known was possible. This imagery captures the transformative journey from deep internal suffering to a renewed sense of life and peace.

Midwifery of the soul. Shianne likens her role as a healer to that of a midwife, guiding individuals through this difficult "transition of labor." The circle, as a collective, provides the supportive environment for this rebirth, witnessing the emergence of doves from the site of wounds. This process is not a one-time event but an ongoing journey, where the community continually holds a vision of healing and release.

9. Beyond Soldier-Savior: Reclaiming Salvation as Collective Soul Work

Excarnation is necessarily selective, necessarily careless of human particularities. It is the edge of American civil religion that cuts the soldier as it attempts to heal him.

Excarnation's cost. Jonathan Ebel's concept of "excarnation" describes how American civil religion extracts the "spirit" or meaning from a soldier's body, using it to reproduce national ideals while being "careless of human particularities." This process, which "cuts the soldier as it attempts to heal him," creates a disconnect between the idealized narrative of sacrifice and the lived reality of veterans' suffering, leaving their wounds unaddressed.

Salvation as recovery. WJH offers a counter-theology, refiguring salvation not as a triumphant, individual act of sacrifice, but as a collective process of seeking and recovering "lost souls." This challenges the "soldier-savior" trope by emphasizing communal responsibility and the interconnectedness of healing. The focus shifts from a singular hero to a community engaged in the ongoing work of reanimating life and making peace with the dead and the living.

Re-infusing flesh with spirit. Instead of a "pneuma-logic" where the spirit of the nation hovers over embodied realities, WJH's practices embody a more elemental spirit. Jesus' act of breathing a "holy spirit" into the Upper Room reanimates the collective, enabling them to confront and cross histories of suffering. This "less orthodox register" of theology repositions suffering, allowing it to be engaged rather than idealized, and fostering a radical vision of interconnectedness.

10. The "After-Living": Navigating Life Amidst Ongoing Trauma

The exigencies of after-living require a hermeneutics that engages wounds.

Wounds as persistent realities. The book concludes by emphasizing that some wounds never truly disappear; they remain invisible, operating beneath the surface of our lives, and often resurface in unrecognizable ways. This "after-living" or "ongoingness" demands a theological approach that confronts, rather than erases, the complexities of life beyond literal or figurative "deaths."

A new hermeneutics of wounds. The Johannine resurrection accounts, particularly the Thomas encounter, provide a framework for this "hermeneutics that engages wounds." It shifts the focus from securing doctrinal truth to the practical work of engaging suffering. This involves:

• Re-conceiving touch: Not as grasping truth, but as embodying healing and valuing the devalued.
• Breathing spirit: Reanimating life and carrying forward difficult memories.
• Forming community: Cultivating practices of care, companionship, and truth-telling.

Communal reckoning and crossing. The Upper Room becomes a site for communal reckoning with pasts, where shame, grief, and anger are released. It fosters a collective vision where wounds are touched, and new configurations of life are envisioned and carried forward. Amid the ongoingness of violence, this community forges paths across wounds, embodying a sustaining theology that probes the capacities to hold pain and stay with difficult truths.