Brokenness

Midweek Easter Reflection

May 20, 2020

I texted my mom after worship on Sunday to tell her I didn’t feel well and ask if she thought it affected worship that morning. She said “No, and it sounds like you’re running on empty.” I rested the rest of Sunday and felt better (although not 100%) on Monday. I’m trying not to run on empty. I (mostly) eat healthy, get enough sleep, exercise, read my bible and pray daily. I’m doing my favorite stress relievers of reading for fun, baking, and doing puzzles. How did I still end up on empty when I’m doing everything right? Because we are being traumatized right now. We are living thru trauma. But it’s not one-time event like 9/11, it’s ongoing, it’s months-long, and we don’t know when it will end. It’s wearing. It’s unsustainable. And so we’ve got to continue those self-care practices, even when we feel empty.

My children’s health lesson today was about self-care, and it was reassuring to realize that we’re doing a lot of the suggested activities: exercising for 10 minutes, dancing to your favorite song, playing a game, organizing your room, reading your favorite story, talking with your favorite person, creating something that makes you happy, and more. Self-care is when you do things to take care of yourself. It helps you manage how to care for yourself as well as make good choices for your wellbeing and the wellbeing of others. And so we’re doing many of these activities, sometimes many of them all in one day, and yet, we can still wind up feeling empty and broken.

I called our accompanist yesterday to ask for ideas for tonight’s song, and she’s the one who came up with the variation of “Just As I Am” with the addition of the chorus, “I come broken to be mended. I come wounded to be healed. I come desperate to be rescued. I come empty to be filled. I come guilty to be pardoned.” And I started thinking of different examples in the bible when people are experiencing those feelings. I mentioned on Sunday how Elijah flees to Mount Horeb, broken and empty. David comes guilty before God after having Uriah killed in battle so that he can marry Bathsheba. There’s the father of a sick child who comes to Jesus for his son’s healing and shares that great statement of faith, “Lord, I believe. God, help my unbelief!” There’s Nehemiah who weeps over a broken wall. There’s the man who’s possessed by many spirits, called Legion, who lives in a graveyard and comes to Jesus for healing. Then there’s emptiness. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty.” We’re in the season of Easter, when we celebrate the fact that the tomb is empty. And almost any time there’s a feeding of thousands of people, it begins with hungry people, empty bellies, and Jesus telling the disciples, “Do not send them away empty.” So, the disciples find some food and Jesus multiplies it to feed everyone with basketfuls leftover. Finally, there are many, many psalms about brokenness and wounded-ness and emptiness and guiltiness, including Psalms 31, 42, 79, and 142, should you want to look them up later.

But the two stories that kept my attention more are from Elijah and Elisha in the books of Kings. In 1 Kings 17:7-16, we read the story of how there’s a famine, which is not quite a pandemic, yet people are stressed figuring out how they’re going to provide for their families and not knowing how long it will last and if they’ll die from it. During that time, God sends Elijah to a widow in Zarephath who’s supposed to supply Elijah with food. He meets her out at the town gate and asks for some food. Can you imagine, during a famine, being asked by a stranger for food? What would your response be? I wish I could help? Mister, don’t you know there’s a famine? No one has any food! Instead, she’s polite and says she has no food, only a handful of flour and a little oil, which she is planning to be her and her son’s last meal before they die. She’s trying to tell him, we have nothing left. There is no food. Just enough for us for one last small meal before we die from hunger. We’re running on empty. Elijah responds by telling her to not be afraid. Go do as she planned. But, first make a small loaf for him and God promises that the flour and oil will not run dry until the famine is over. The lady is at her wit’s end. She has nothing left. She cannot provide for her son. She cannot get more food. There is no more food; there’s a famine. And yet she agrees to do what Elijah asked and make him a small loaf first. What does she have to lose? She does it and there is enough food every day during the famine for her, her family, and Elijah. There is enough.

Then there’s a story of Elisha and a widow in 2 Kings 4:1-7. This time the woman comes to Elisha and asks for help. She’s the widow of a prophet and apparently either has inherited or racked up a lot of debt, because the creditor is about to take her two sons into slavery in order to pay her debts. Elisha agrees to help and asks what she has. She says we’re running on empty. All they have is a little bit of oil, even less than the widow in Zarephath had. Elisha says we can use that. Collect as many empty jars as you can and pour the oil into them. She does that and the oil does not run out until all the jars are full. Then Elisha tells her to sell them and use the money to pay her debts and live on what is left.

The Festival of Homiletics, a weeklong preaching continuing ed event that I love attending is going on this week, online, of course, and free if you watch it live. I listened to a sermon yesterday by one of my favorite preachers I’ve heard at this Festival, Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He talked about brokenness, among other things, and shared a story that is told in Jewish circles of a conversation between a rabbi and a child. The child asks, “Why does God allow our hearts to break?” The rabbi replies, “So that he can feel the cracks.” Then Dr. Moss quoted from Leonard Cohen, who writes, “Everything is broken. Everything has cracks. That’s how the light gets in.” Everything is broken. Everything has cracks. That’s how the light gets in. It reminds me of the different between a solid pane of glass and broken glass. A solid pane looks nice, sure. But the light that shines through broken glass is infinitely brighter.

There is an ancient Japanese art called “kintsugi” which is the art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with gold. It treats the brokenness and repair as part of the history of the object, rather than as something to disguise or pretend it isn’t there. Moreover, these pieces that have been repaired with gold are considered of a higher value than pottery that hasn’t been broken and repaired. It’s something to think about, isn’t it? To value your scars, to value your gray hairs, to value the bumps and bruises and places of brokenness you’ve acquired along the path of life. To highlight them and show them as things of beauty, instead of ugliness and trying to paint over them. We’ve each been broken. We all bear scars, whether physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. We all have them. We all have times of emptiness. We all have times when we have bare cupboards, save for a little bit of oil.

At the beginning of his public ministry, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 61:1-4. He reads the scroll out loud in the temple, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.”

What God can do with brokenness is beyond our imagination. What God can do with dust, with us, is more than we dare dream of. We want to hide our brokenness, but God says, it’s ok. I love you, just as you are. Come to me. Do not fear being broken. I will put you back together again, with gold in your seams. The cracks are how the light gets through, the light of Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world, who came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. It may not feel abundant now. In fact, it may feel pretty empty and broken now. But God can do more with brokenness than if you’re whole. There are more pieces to work with, for one J Pride doesn’t get in the way. Don’t be afraid to show your scars and your emptiness. If someone can’t handle it, that’s their issue, not yours. Come broken, to be mended. Come just as you are.