Post-Traumatic God by David W. Peters

Author:David W. Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Church Publishing Inc.
Published: 2016-01-06T05:00:00+00:00

Post-Traumatic Witness

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

—Cormac McCarthy in All the Pretty Horses

When I saw those planes crash into the building, it was surreal.” Witnesses to 9/11 often use the word “surreal” to describe how they felt on that horrible day. It is as if their minds could not comprehend what was happening in the real world, in reality. This is a normal response to horrific images and events.

During my years as a chaplain on the amputee and psych wards at Walter Reed, I heard many such stories of surreal horror. Being blown up was “weird,” “strange,” or “just like in the video games.” The aftermath was not, however. There was real pain and death. My own experiences in Iraq are often shrouded in fog. I try to remember details with little success. Other details, like the sound of a whirring air conditioner during a rocket attack, are stamped in my memory forever. Our memories are tricky things.

The death of Jesus was a horrific, traumatic event to watch. John is said to have been present for the whole thing. Luke tells us “all his acquaintances” stood at a distance watching. The trauma of Good Friday continues to traumatize the Church. At every Good Friday service I have preached at or attended, I can feel the tightness of breath in the congregation. I can see the constricted faces and the winces when his pain is mentioned. We live Good Friday with Jesus, as best we can. It is wise that we have compartmentalized Good Friday to one day per year. Perhaps it is the only way we can bear it.

John, as the closest observer, tells us about the soldier who pierced Jesus’s side with a spear. “Pierced” is a strange word to use in this case. Anyone who uses it has probably not undergone military training with a spear or the modern equivalent, the bayonet. During his first week in the Roman army, the soldier who stuck his spear into Jesus would have practiced the move. I practiced it in Marine Corps Boot Camp in 1994. It has not changed in thousands of years. Feet shoulder width apart, with one foot out front for stability. The thrust must be quick if it is to penetrate skin and bone. It is even more difficult when you are thrusting up, up at a man on a cross. To see one’s friend stabbed this way is unthinkable. It would be surreal, at best. The mind would recoil, shrink, divert to something stranger than that. What would you see? What would I see?

John saw blood and water come pouring out of the wound. For two thousand years Christians have pondered the meaning of this flow. The author inserts, right after the piercing in John 19:35, that “He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe.” He goes one step further to say, “His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.” Was anyone questioning this? John does not interpret the blood and the water here in his Gospel.

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