Transformation starts with acknowledging that change is needed. It involves being freed and healed from the scars of the past. In Gospel Medicine, the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor says that “the way you recognize Christ-and his followers-is not by their muscles but by their scars.” That is what makes Christianity truly Good News. We are “to follow [our] leader into the scariest, most dangerous places in the world armed with nothing but a first aid kit, because, like him, [we] are not fighters but physicians-wounded healers-whose credentials are [our] hurt places.”
At the beginning of St. George and the Dragon and the Search for the Holy Grail, George feels called to go on a quest. Almost immediately he meets is a dragon, who is old and scarred. “I noticed that the dragon’s body was covered with old wounds. Whenever the dragon breathed forth fire to light the path…the wounds glowed golden-red in the dark.”
George asks about this phenomenon. The dragon responds, “These old wounds are the source of my power and my insights…as we journey through life we have been injured…the possible list of the guilty is long. Each wound has the power to talk…with crooked voices because of the scars.”
In order to be the “wounded healers” that Taylor talks about, we have to accept that we are broken and scarred. In the post-Easter story of Jesus’ appearance on the road to Emmaus, He is known in the “breaking of the bread.” We are known as followers of the Risen Christ in the way we are “broken bread and poured out wine” to each other as Oswald Chambers says. (My Utmost for His Highest)
We have a choice, though. We don’t have to change and follow. The dragon tells George a story that illustrates our choice. “Once upon a time [in] a great prison” the men form an “Escape Committee” that is actually sanctioned by the warden. “The warden’s ingenious plan made life inside the prison better for everyone. He and he guards did not have to worry about anyone escaping; life and work inside the prison went on without trouble…the prisoners, once clouded by despair, now lived with a sense of hope and promise. Their meager, imprisoned lives now had meaning.”
The First Letter of Peter issues a call to transformation for all who seek to follow Christ. “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good…, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (I Peter 2:1-4)
Peter warns that Christ is "A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." (I Peter 2:8). Taylor notes, “The Gospel is not pablum. It is powerful stuff…The peace of God is worth anything it takes to get there…in Christ God has given us someone worth fighting about, and someone with enough clout to end our fighting, for his word is like fire, like a hammer that breaks rocks into pieces.”
Those who choose freedom and transformation are broken. They become what Peter calls “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (I Peter 2:9) Jesus offers freedom in the brokenness of life. We find wholeness when our scars glow.
The dragon asks George, “How many people do you know who settle for something less than freedom?” Are you settling for something less than real freedom?
*quotes from Gospel Medicine by Barbara Brown Taylor and St. George and the Dragon and the Quest for the Holy Grail by Edward Hays.
