One of the most arresting verses in Scripture tells of townspeople coming to Jesus and seeing a man who’d been possessed “sitting there clothed and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15). In another, we read:  “the dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother” (Luke 7:15). Yet another verse says when Jesus laid His hands on a woman bent-over for 18 years, “she at once stood up straight and gave glory to God” (Luke 13:13).

Human dignity is restored to someone shattered. A dead relationship comes to life. A broken person is made whole. How does it happen?

A woman I once knew was a responsible and caring person, but couldn’t sit still, laughed at everything and babbled constantly in a childish voice. Long after we’d lost touch, I happened to encounter her face-to-face — and dazzling. Her countenance, now shiningly visible, radiated peace. She was clothed and in her right mind, beginning to talk, straightening up and giving glory to God. She was clearly the same person, but had I ever seen her before? I’d been too distracted by mannerisms that reflected her wounds. She taught me to look at people differently.

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For the people who witnessed Jesus healing their neighbours, did they afterwards look differently at each other? The out-of-control monster they couldn’t bear to have among them turned out to be a person, like them. The aggressive behaviours, chains and rags were symptoms, and Jesus wasn’t fooled. Jesus always saw the person, and “did not need anyone to testify about human nature; He Himself understood it well” (John 2:25).

The rest of us often are fooled by “symptoms,” our own or other people’s.  Their behaviours, attitudes and affects define them for us. It’s difficult to see through the brokenness, especially when it causes harm. If your teenage son whom you love came into the kitchen and started breaking things, your first impulse would likely be to stop him somehow.  The destructive chaos can make it hard for anyone to reach the person at its centre, who ends up increasingly alone.  

How can an illness be properly treated if it isn’t properly diagnosed? How can we understand ourselves if we aren’t aware of, or are hostile to hearing, the cause of our pain — or even that we are in pain? The illness itself, and the “treatments” that have harmed us further, can trick us into thinking we’re super-powers, like the man in the tombs who could break every chain; or, as with the widow’s son, that there’s no hope at all and we might as well get buried.

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What if Jesus calls us to recognize wounds, and discern their source, so they can be treated? The Greek word trauma, meaning wound, appears just once in the New Testament: “he went to him and bandaged his wounds (traumas), pouring on oil and wine” (Luke 10:34). It’s not a safe or easy work, as Jesus’ story of the foreigner who helped the wounded man shows. No, it’s delicate, costly, time-consuming — and personal. It requires us to come close to each other. When we do, all Heaven breaks loose.

Jesus comes to us as Physician.  Those of us who work hard to appear virtuous and “all together” may find we’re living as though Christ didn’t need to come and die on a Cross and be raised from the dead. Yet acting out of such illusory perfection is painful for our souls.  

God was not ashamed to become fully human in Christ, without losing or muddling His divinity. The Incarnation is not an invented dogma or a pretty concept set up to adorn the lives of religious people who are already self-sufficient. The Incarnation, Jesus says, is only for those who are sick, for it is the sick who need a physician. How can we turn to the divine Physician if we consider ourselves perfectly well?  How can we enter the Church if we don’t think we need the anointing oil, the bandaging, the food and drink given freely to the wounded traveller?

In our wounds God meets us, and by His wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24). Only through the cracks of our lives does the light shine.  This awareness can make us less afraid of others, who might not be as good as we are at hiding our wounds.

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The Samaritan, as the scholar for whom Jesus told the parable understands, is the true neighbour to the robbers’ victim. And who is the robbed and wounded man, bleeding by the roadside, unable to help himself? Who is the one in need of mercy?

As a colleague observed: “it can take a moment to traumatize thousands, but a lifetime to heal one person.” We can feel defeated by the immensity of the need.  We can also glory in the personal nature of the Church, that finds it beautiful to care for one person.