ROBERT A. RAINES is a prolific author, currently Director of Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in Bangor, Pennsylvania, following twenty years in parish work. His sermon, God’s Wounded Healers, was preached on a return visit to First United Methodist Church of Germantown, Pennsylvania, where he had been co-minister from 1961-1970. In it he lifts up the principle that our preaching has its greatest strength and integrity sometimes when we are speaking from the experiential knowledge of our own wounds such as loneliness; when we are invoking the compassionate authority of Henri Nouwen’s "wounded healer."

One night several years ago, at a group meeting at our house here in Philadelphia, a man shared his personal pilgrimage with us, his own struggle with suffering, and he concluded with a com…