When war casualty figures are announced, the list usually includes both the dead and wounded. For all practical purposes an injury is almost as useful as a fatality. The cold logic of such devilish grim business classes both in the same category ... loss of retaliatory potential. There is no place in this horror called war for the wounded. They have nothing more to offer to the immediate needs. They have been reduced from possibility to impotency.

Thus, those who use statistics as part of strategy take comfort and counsel in the knowledge that a wounded soldier no longer has a contribution to make. What he once had to offer is no longer helpful or utilitarian. From such a fact the enemy may find cause for rejoicing, his allies may have regret and, as an individual, the wounded soldier may despair. His sadness may not be so much for his own hurt as over the fact that he no longer has a contribution to make. What utter devastation of soul and spirit when one feels useless.

Now, reversing the picture, let us look at being wounded from another standpoint, not in a negative or neurotic light, but in terms of one of the reversible dimensions of life’s meaning. Thorton Wilder expresses it memorably in his play, "The Angel That Troubled the Waters." The scene of the play is laid at the pool of Siloam, where, at a certain hour of the day, the Gospel story tells us, an angel ruffles the surface of the water, and whoever at that moment is lowered into the pool is healed of his infirmity. In the throng of sufferers gathered expectantly around the pool one day, a physician is discovered. He suffers from an incurable disease and, like the others, he is seeking a miraculous restoration of wholeness and health. But as he pushes forward, he hears the angel of healing speak to him:

"Draw back, physician ... Healing is not for you ... Without your wound where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve. Draw back ..."

As he turns away from the pool, bewildered, he is caught hold of by a distracted father ... "You may be next, my brother. But come with me first, an hour only, to my home. My son is lost in dark thoughts. I ... I do not understand him, and only you have ever lifted his mood. Only an hour ... my daughter since her child has died sits in the shadow. She will not listen to us ..." (as told by John M. Krumm in, The Art of Being A Sinner.) And so the physician learns the profound truth that "In Love’s service, only the wounded can serve."

It is a truth to ponder. So often it can be overlooked and passed by in the anguish of self-pity. Yet, it is one of the inexorable laws of life. When Helen Keller said about her blindness and deafness, "I thank God for my handicaps for through them I have found myself, my work and my God," she knew what it meant. When self-pity ceased, she found a fuller meaning and discovered that great truth: In Love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve. Her whole life was devoted to helping the handicapped. She spoke their language, understood their fears, and had walked in the same valleys of despair. As one wounded herself, she was better able to bind up the wounds of others.

In much the same vein, we have that great Negro educator Booker T. Washington writing of the "advantage of disadvantages." Those who have known some of the costliness of life have also been its best interpreters. To be a wounded soldier is neither to admit defeat nor is it to lie down in surrender to the inevitable. Without wounded soldiers, the history of mankind would be much different from what it is today. But in Love’s service, those who themselves have known so vividly the pain and anguish of inner frustration, fear, bitterness and the blackness of life’s warfare often prove themselves the best soldiers in the ministry of compassion or understanding.

By the same token, some of the most beautiful and exquisite literature, music, drama, and poetry have been written by those who felt deeply the wounds of life. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a semi-invalid ... Robert Louis Stevenson lived with the pain of his tuberculosis ... and Beethoven, despite his deafness, heard heavenly music which he translated for the mortal realm. St. Paul went about his ministry bearing a thorn in the flesh, as he called it. He prayed desperately to have his infirmity removed, but the word came back, "My grace is sufficient for you."

It is enough to say, "He was a wounded soldier in life’s service." He did not uselessly dissipate his energy nursing his hurts or bitterly draw a circle around himself. Because of his sensitivity, perceptivity, and empathy, he was more often able to say and write the word that needed to be said. Without his wound, he would not have been able to understand the depth of another’s suffering. With it, he could enter usefully and lovingly into the needs of fellow man and make his contribution to the enrichment of another life. "In Love’s service, only the wounded can serve."

It is an insight each person needs to grasp. Life does not always deal with us kindly. The day by day struggle brings, in time, some bumps and bruises, some pains and sorrows, some infirmities and deep disappointments. Few, if any, have escaped the hurts and wounds that come in the warfare of life. But let me say this ... much of the recoverability of man has come about because there was a kindred mind and sensitive soul sharing at a time when the way seemed darkest and the gloom deepest. Many a man, woman, and child has bounced back from life’s apparent greatest defeat because someone walked alongside them and said, "Look, I’ve been there, too." At one time or another we have been wounded soldiers in Love’s service, or we have depended on someone else who was a wounded soldier ministering to our personal tragedy. Man was made for fellowship. Within that fellowship the redeeming art of relating to another person is not an option but a requirement.

Because we are wounded, we can contribute that extra measure of life’s meaning which shares intimately the wounds of another. He who has been sustained and uplifted by someone sharing in a deep hurt can redeem, relieve, and realign the raw hurts of his neighbor and, in so doing, find the deeper usefulness of identification and fulfillment. This is the very genius of Alcoholics Anonymous. Only one who has already been there can speak the language, know the turmoil, and show the road back to a fellow-sufferer. The amazing miracle of restoration takes place again and again because, "In Love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve." Many a self-considered failure has learned to live again because someone believed in him. That someone who believed was most likely a wounded soldier out doing something useful with his hurts. The tremendous lifting power that has restored and re-established countless souls has come so often from those who had previously walked where the valley dipped into utter darkness. Doing something useful with our hurts is to accept the challenge of the wound and to find new enrichment for ourselves and others. It’s a haunting phrase. But even more significant, it is a way of life that all must tread to fulfill their humanity: "In Love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve."

Now, let us move one step further from the personal to the theological. In the book of Hebrews we read: "For we have no superhuman High Priest to whom our weaknesses are unintelligible - He himself has shared fully in all our experience of temptation, except that He never sinned. Let us therefore approach the Throne of grace with fullest confidence, that we may receive mercy for our failures and grace to help in the hour of need." (Hebrews 4:15-16, J. B. Phillips)

That powerful verse offers great insight into our understanding of the love of God for his children. It ties together what we have been trying to say about the mutual understanding of human beings through shared experience. Jesus Christ is no distant Savior, so far removed from the needs and hurts of mankind that he has no true experiential relationship with those he seeks to save. An immaculate God who is of purer eyes than to behold the iniquity of his children cannot be expected to speak convincingly about forgiveness. Yet Christ on the cross experiencing man’s most inhumane treatment could beg forgiveness for all humanity. Here is the love of an empathetic heart and a compassionate soul. Here is first-hand understanding of the fears of men that torment them into doing their worst when their fright is greatest. Here is preaching at its most eloquent moment ... not a white-robed priest standing remotely removed, towering over those lesser than himself and saying, "Love your neighbor." No, here is a man, Jesus Christ, God’s son, dying on a cross for the sins of mankind. The cross is a vivid example of the truth that "In Love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve."

This is the precise point of that verse from the book of Hebrews. It means that Christians can confidently find grace to help in time of need, because we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted similarly to us. He sympathizes because he has, through common experience, a real kinship with those who suffer.

Such a thought must stretch the mind and expand the hope of all mankind. Jesus Christ is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. The quality of his life showed an amazing sensitivity to human need. He endured his trials and our trials, yet without sinning. Yet, "let us with confidence draw near," meaning that despite his perfection we can still speak freely to him. We are confident and can speak freely because we know that Jesus understands us, and is one of us and with us. This is the most that God could do without destroying our freedom. We can come, voluntarily, to the throne of grace. The throne is our human figure for the abode of God, where his presence is most clearly known. But to approach a throne ... and such a throne ... with the story of our defeats, with our cry for help ... who would understand? We turn away at the mention of a throne. But it is a throne of grace, where we can go in confidence and safety. Jesus Christ who is our High Priest ... our confessor ... the One in who’s name we pray ... is not some distant saint who looks with disdain on our poor and puny human efforts and failures. As friend, confidante, mediator, and Savior, he is one who has known the worst and done with it the best.

Therefore, he is both example by his sinlessness, and friend by his participation, in the struggles of mankind. The highest, holiest manhood who ever lived, walked this earth and knew every pitfall of the path each must take as he walks the road of life. He came to reveal what God is like and we call him "the Word incarnate." But he also lived as man. God’s son lived as we live, in order that no one could ever say he knows absolutely nothing of the meaning and trials of human existence.

In our humanness we find so many areas where we do what we know to be wrong and where we leave undone what we know to be right. We know so often the sense of sin and failure and frustration. Again and again we miss the mark. Can anyone know the utter futility and desolation that, at times, we feel? Yes! Jesus Christ has walked the same lonesome trail. Our problem lies not in what he does or might do for us, but in our own lack of confidence in what he can do. Fearing his superior holiness, we are often ashamed to come to him in humility and penitence. But our Christ is a sensitive soul. Read again of the lost sheep, the woman pardoned for her indiscretion, the act of forgiveness from the cross. He has demonstrated vividly and magnificently what is personal and theological: "In Love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve."

Yes, "... he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5 - RSV). What we are incapable of doing for ourselves, God in Christ has done for us. Our weaknesses are known to him. So are our possibilities. Rather than condemn us for what we have been, he invites us to become what we were intended to be. This is our encouragement: "Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with fullest confidence, that we may receive mercy for our failures and grace to help us in the hour of need."

Out of his wounds he brings wholeness to our wounds. "This is my body, broken for you ... This is my blood ... shed for many for the remission of sins." Here at his table we find the wounded love that binds up our wounds and sends us forth to live that love before, and for, the whole world.