The Wounded Surgeon

T.S. Eliot's Poetry, Seeds, and Good Friday

This post is coming to you a few days early (on Friday instead of Sunday). I hope you enjoy these Good Friday thoughts!

Peter Paul Rubens, The Descent from the Cross

Dear Reader,

Eight years ago, less than a month after my wedding, my father had a quadruple bypass surgery. In order to fix the blockages in his heart, the surgeons had to actually break open his chest wall—an incredibly painful ordeal. A wound that took months to heal—has never fully healed.

In a section of “East Coker”, one of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, the poet uses paradox to contemplate his place in the world, and his own art. This section invites us to think of ourselves as patients in need of a surgeon: 

IV

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood –
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.¹

The Paradox of the Cross

Eliot speaks of Jesus as the “wounded surgeon” with “bleeding hands” performing surgery on us, as sick sinners. Throughout the poem he uses paradoxes to juxtapose the seemingly contradictory ideas of healing and pain—the truth of sanctification. There is the “sharp compassion” Jesus gives us. We must “be warmed…in frigid purgatorial fires” and “to be restored, our sickness must grow worse”. Neither confession nor sanctification feel good in the moment. Like surgery that must sever flesh, both processes inflict pain before the healing can begin.  

In John 12:24, we see another paradox. Surrounded by the controversy of Lazarus’s resurrection, Jesus tells the people that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”² In order for a seed to germinate and give forth life, it must first be buried beneath the soil and physically die. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed that grows into a sprawling tree. In John, Jesus is talking about himself: he is the seed that must die at the crucifixion, taking on the “sickness” of our sin and death, before redemption can bloom. 

Shadows of Christ

This pattern of death and resurrection appears all over the Bible. Numerous “types” of Jesus go through near death experiences or symbolic deaths before being given new identities. When God makes the covenant with Abraham, He puts him into a “death-sleep”. Then the patriarch is given a new name: Abram becomes Abraham. Likewise, after Jacob wrestles with the angel (God), he comes away with a lifelong wound, but he also has a new name and a new identity: Israel. Abraham and Jacob (and a host of others) had to go through their literal or symbolic death before gaining their new identity. However, Abraham never saw God’s promise of a great nation in his lifetime. Jacob carried his wound for the rest of his days. These people are only “types” or shadows of Christ. Their stories pre-figure the greatest story. 

Death=Freedom

As Christians, we see this pattern in our own lives: once, when we are justified by Christ’s death, but also over and over again as he sanctifies us. Constantly, we are called to die to ourselves. It’s a phrase often heard in Christian circles, but what does it actually mean? When a part of us dies, it is replaced by something greater. A young girl’s imaginative games fade away as she becomes an adolescent, but they are replaced with the vivid, fantastical tales she writes. I said good-bye to full nights of sleep and most of my alone time when my daughter was born, but in return I get to be a mother to the best and brightest little girl. What a joy! When we die to ourselves, we are dying to sin, the sickness that pervades our souls, and being resurrected to new life and healing in Christ. 

Romans 6:4–11 tells us that we share in Christ’s death and resurrection: 

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his…For one who has died has been set free from sin…So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.³

As Christians, we take part in Jesus’ death. Like seeds, our old selves are buried and dead, and we are resurrected to new life in Christ, so that we “might walk in the newness of life…set free from sin”.  Another paradox: death is freedom. 

United to Christ

We will also be united with Christ in his resurrection. When Jesus came out of the tomb on the third day, he had a glorified body (interestingly enough, still bearing his scars). We know this because of the way he disappeared after talking with his disciples on the road to Emmaus and the way he appeared to the twelve in a locked room. Like this glorification, we will have new, glorified bodies in the new heaven and new earth, when the Kingdom of God is fully realized. The seed is also a tiny mustard seed about to blossom into the kingdom. 

Flesh and Blood

The “purgatorial fires” in Eliot’s poem are made of roses and briars. There are thorns (perhaps a crown of thorns), but also blooms of life—the promise and hope of the resurrection, of Easter. The last stanza of the poem references communion: “the dripping blood” and the “bloody flesh”. These are our only food, the poet says. A grotesque image for a poem about healing. The next lines remind us that as humans we often think ourselves sufficient, acting as though our own souls are without the disease of sin. However, our only hope is Christ, the wounded surgeon. As my father had to undergo the pain of surgery before his heart could work properly again, without the deep cut of Christ’s scalpel, we can never fully be healed from sin. “In spite of that,” the poet says, “we call this Friday Good.”

On Good Friday, we sit in the reality of the cross, we contemplate the disease of our own sin and our need for a savior. Yet we also look ahead to Easter: our part in Christ’s resurrection. Beyond that, we can see the fulfillment of the kingdom, God’s ultimate victory, that is here already but not yet—the day when sin’s disease will infect no more and all wounds will be fully healed. 

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Join the conversation

What other paradoxes do you notice in the poem? In what ways have you died to yourself and gained something greater?

1. The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

2. John 12:23–26, ESV

3. Romans 6:4–11, ESV