These Wounds I Suffered in the House of My Friends...

I credit my mother with the great majority of my Bible teaching.  She bought me my first Bible when I was 14 years old.  She drove me to Bible study for the 2 years following.  She taught me memory scriptures from my earliest days, and so beautifully sang gospel music that I still hum her songs to comfort my soul when it is troubled.  Mom gathered the family for Bible reading and prayer periodically.  She also called me to help pray through the family's toughest times.  My spirituality is mostly a reflection of hers.  Nevertheless, the two verses my father taught me reverberate in my mind as often as all the others.  One verse is about having to show yourself to be friendly if you hope to make friends.  The other is the subject of this entry. 

And one will say to him, "What are these wounds between your arms?" Then he will say, "Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."  --Zechariah 13:6

 Despite being raised in New Jersey, my father has a Southerner's gift for memorable phrases.  His sayings, like, "What they do with you, they'll do to you" have served me well.  His quotations of Zechariah 13:6 were given like an old country saying, and I have internalized its wisdom accordingly.  The context for Zechariah 13 is God's prophecy of a devastating military defeat for Judah, and the verse itself centers on a false prophet whom the Jews reject.  Again, I never learned the context for the verse.  In fact, I don't recall Dad ever giving a citation for it all--beyond it being in the Bible.  So, I've learned the scripture and used it as folk wisdom.  Even still, the word of the Lord is never void. 

We've all heard the saying, "you only hurt the ones you love."  Standing alone, Zechariah 13:6 pretty much means the same thing, but from the victim's perspective.  Paraphrased, "I am only hurt by the ones I love."  Through my many hours of therapy  :)  I almost exclusively talk about the "wounds I suffered in the house of my friends."  Though the events are years, even decades, old, I spend countless hours rehashing hurtful incidents--incidents that refuse my best efforts to bury them beyond my memory.  Usually, folks had no malice when they hurt me, but the wounds are so deep that I am still tending to them all these years later. 

The scripture speaks to that sentiment.  The wounds the false prophet bares are actually from his mother and father, who attempted to kill him because of what he spoke (Zech. 13:3).  Though no one tried to kill me, the wounds are so deep and obvious to everyone that it appears the wounds came from a murder attempt.  I'm sure everyone relates to that.  We all carry very deep wounds.   

The point being, the wounds we suffer in supposedly safe and nurturing places hurt the worst and mark us for years.  As Paul Simon said in "Graceland", "Everybody sees you're blown apart.  Everybody hears the wind blow."  Simon concludes by saying, "I'm going to Graceland."  My next post demonstrates why the metaphorical "Graceland," i.e. Heaven, represented by the Church, may not be a sanctuary for safety.  When it comes to race, white Churches apparently function as "the house of your friends."