Without our wound, where would our power be?
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Jared E. Alcantara’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Jared E. Alcantara is Professor of Preaching at Truett Seminary at Baylor University. He was born and raised in New Jersey and came to faith in Christ at the age of 14. He is half Latino, Honduran, and half white. An ordained Baptist minister, he has served as a youth pastor, associate pastor, and teaching pastor in Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, and New Jersey.
Before coming to Truett, from 2014 to 2018, he served as an associate professor of homiletics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Dr. Alcantara is passionate about equipping students to preach God's word in ways that are faithful, effective, clear, and inspiring. He also plays piano, enjoys disc golf, and is a rabid Philadelphia Eagles fan, which I try really hard not to hold against him.
He lives in the Waco area with his wife, Jennifer, and their three daughters.
Greetings, everyone.
My name is Jared Alcantara, and I teach preaching at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary. Normally, I want to rush to express gratitude to all manner of people, so I'll try to keep this part short, just because our time together is short.
So thank you to the organizers of Enfleshing Witness for extending this gracious invitation to me. Thank you, participants, for the ways that you serve in and alongside the Church, the church for which Jesus died. And thank you for the gift of your attention as well, which I do not take for granted. Our attention is a gift that we bestow on one another rather than a right or a demand that we should expect. Thank you.
In our brief time together, I'd like to draw on an image, an idea, and a scene. Let me start with the image. This is Paul Bartholomew's sculpture, “Lamenting Group.” Here it is from another angle. Perhaps you see yourself in it somewhere. Now there are many things that I could say about this image, but I'll stick to just one.
In an age marked by loss, there are plenty of reasons for us to lament, but not nearly enough lamenting groups to go around.
You don't need me to tell you that our world has seen better days. There's battles in our government, and battles on social media, and battles at the border, and battles for democracy itself.
The losses pile up. Losses from natural disasters, and losses to human rights, and losses from the war in Ukraine, and losses to human life on account of the havoc that's been wrought by COVID 19. You don't need me to tell you that our churches have seen better days. Denominations are splitting, are in danger of such. Cases of clergy abuse harm and even destroy our public witness. Some churches are struggling with membership losses and decline. And other churches sound way too much like psychophants of the state, rather than voices crying in the wilderness. There are plenty of reasons to lament. Not nearly enough lamenting groups to go around.
In light of these truths, these truths about our world, Let me also introduce an idea or consider an idea together with you. And I'll call on Gardner C. Taylor, the great poet laureate of preaching, civil rights leader, and advocate in New York City. Here's what Taylor says:
“Any authenticity that we're going to have as persons of faith, and any authority that we're going to have as witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ, will become or will come because of our exposure to bruises and scars. There is no other way to authenticity.”
What if our bruises and our scars are somehow conduits of gospel hope in the world? What if others can know through our bruises and scars that there is a God before whom they can bring their bruises and scars? So often we conclude wrongly that we must insulate ourselves or protect ourselves from pain.
So we put on that famous Sunday morning smile. We insist that it's spring rather than winter in our souls. We project a false self rather than who we are. We avoid knowing and being known by others. You know of that which I speak. Now, if you insulate yourself and you protect yourself from pain, then you may go through life with fewer bumps and bruises, but will you truly live?
Moreover, will you be able to reach others through authentic and enfleshed witness?
And now we come at the last to a scene. A scene. Jesus goes to the pool of Bethesda. Some of you have Bethsata. He encounters a man lying on a mat, and he heals him on a Sabbath, which means that he gets into all kinds of trouble.
Now, a tradition developed around this text, which is reflected in the fact that verse four does not appear in many of our Bibles.
Tradition was that an angel would come and trouble the waters or stir up the waters and those who were ill would rush in, in order to be healed. It's depicted right here in this scene, Robert Batesman's, “The Angel That Troubled The Waters.”
Thornton Wilder also wrote a play based on the tradition.
Now two men stand beside large stone steps leading down to a pool. Their names are Newcomer and Mistaken Invalid. Others join them at the water's edge, the sick, the blind, those who are ill. And hope feels like it's giving way to hopelessness, despair, entering into this painful scene, the first scene in Wilder's play.
But suddenly, as so often happens in scripture and in life, an angel appears.
Hope breaks into an impossible situation.
There, on the top step, the angel comes, and Mistaken Invalid cannot contain his excitement, for he's seen hundreds of people healed there at the pool by the angel. “I shall be next,” he exclaims.
Newcomer, who is a physician by trade, he comes to the pool less often. He comes from his bustling clinic in the city, but his injuries, his wounds, are less dire than those of his friends, less apparent and obvious to others. Nevertheless, he comes anyway, hoping to be healed, just like his friends, hoping against hope that things will change. He offers a fervent prayer for healing.
The angel responds in a way that he does not expect. The angel says, “Draw back physician. This moment is not for you, healing is not for you. For without your wound, where would your power be? The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living.”
“In love's service, only the wounded soldiers can serve,” the angel says. This is the beautiful and awful thread that runs throughout the scriptures and throughout our lives. There is no rainbow without a flood, no burning bush without the desert, no exodus without bondage, no return without exile. There is no birth of Jesus without the childbirth of Jesus.
There is no Resurrection Sunday without first passing through Good Friday. Pain and loss do not need to put a stop to our ministries. Indeed, they can authorize and even galvanize our ministry. For in love's service, only the wounded soldiers can serve. You see, as the Scriptures declare, God is especially good at turning our deserts into pools, our parched lands into springs.
Yes, the water tastes bitter to us at the time, but as an act of mercy, God transforms the water into wine in the lives of those to whom we minister. I'll put it another way:
Without our wound, where would our power be?
We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.
