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| He waits for us where we search for waters |
A Messiah without Wounds? A Fake Messiah
Greetings are important. These days we show our ID cards when we greet. Friends may have wished us through Facebook and Whatsapp already. Christ greets us showing his wounds. “Put your finger here and see my hands” (Jn 20/20, 27). They are his identifying marks. The confession of St. Thomas, “My Lord and my God,” within the narratives of the resurrection can be well understood in the whole context of the Gospel.
We see Nathanael and his friends sincerely waiting for the Messiah; they are restless until they find him. There is a rejoicing at Cana, yet something was missing. The learned man of Israel, Nicodemus, searches in darkness for the light of the kingdom of grace. The Samaritan woman longs for a true relationship of belonging. The Paralytic at the pool of Bethzatha cries out of his helplessness. The woman judged to death has no hope out of her tears and shame. All are in need of such help that would give the true meaning and completion for their desire and longing. In Jesus they see a new face of God different from the images the religion, custom or the law had pictured.
This helplessness and death is the wound of the world that God loved so much that he sent his only Son. Jesus waits to meet us where we have found remedies for ourselves; he meets us where we search for waters. We might be struggling to find a meaningful belongingness. It could be within conjugal relation, it could be within social commitments and responsibilities, it could also be our religious aspirations and divine aspects within human quest. The Messiah will surely meet us at the same well asking from us that water and lead us to the well of true worship. We find ourselves helpless, tied up and paralysed in weaknesses when there is no angel to carry us to pools of comfort and wholeness. We struggle in the darkest nights for a little light to be found, yet wearing radiant masks of religiosity and learnedness. We move through the moments facing each to be judged by ourselves and others. There still presses the heaviness of death (lifelessness) where we long to find a ray of grace. We may have lost life completely and begun to be rotten, bringing foul presence to my own existence and to the society, often hiding myself within in our own sorrow and irrational judgements. The Messiah comes near where we are, and we have life if we trust him.
John the Baptist, in the Spirit, recognised that Jesus was the Chosen One of God, and he pointed to him as the Lamb of God – the Lamb of God who takes our pain upon himself, who takes away our lifelessness. There can be false messiahs promising happiness and prosperity, teaching newer and creative ways of living. It cannot be the Messiah, if he has no wound that he himself has suffered for me. When Christ is found really I am found. The more I know him we know our own friendship with God. He is waiting and he will surely find us in our craving, darkness and in death because he has already known our pain. Now coming to him we know those wounds. Probably in dying with him we may know something more of him very intimately. Slowly and gradually the vision of Christ becomes the passion of our life. Every moment we find him it will be an occasion to confess from our heart: “My Lord and my God,” Yes Lord, I love you.
The Messiah has only one thing to say: “Follow me,” let us walk this path together.
