Sermon 2/21/07
Broken - Joel 2:1-2, 12-17, Psalm 51:1-17, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Are you a ‘put together’ person? You may have heard or used the phrase yourself – “That person seems very put together” or “I don’t feel very put together today.” When we use this phrase, we mean that a person ‘has their act together’ – they are organized, or present themselves well, or something like that. Well, I like to consider myself a ‘put together’ person. I may not strike you as the most organized person, the most outwardly put together, but I consider myself very emotionally put together. Since I was very little, I’ve always hated being emotional in front of other people. I prefer to be in control of what emotions I share with others, who I share them with, and when I share them. If you’ve seen me cry, you can be assured that I was greatly stressed to be crying! Part of my dislike of being publicly emotional is from a practical point of view. As a pastor, I am often witness to the full range of human emotions and experiences. I am often trying to be present for someone who can’t possibly be expected to be ‘put together’, and so if I can be ‘put together’ on their behalf, it is a way I can help. But the core of my dislike of sharing my emotions I guess is a dislike of being vulnerable in front of people. Being vulnerable is risky – you are putting yourself and your emotions out there for another person to respond to and take care of, and the responses, the care we receive – these aren’t always what we’ve hoped for, to say the least. I prefer, whenever possible, to stay ‘put together’.
What surprises me is how often we try to be ‘put together’ for God. I think we’re just as concerned about looking good in front of God as we are with looking good in front of one another. I’ve found that we humans are often engaged in an elaborate production, a play of sorts that we put on for God that tries to communicate to God, “look how good we’re doing!” We want God to see in us only the best we have to offer. We want God to be pleased with what God sees in us. We want to put our best foot forward for God, and know that God is happy with us.
Right now, we’re just about to finish up a book study at St. Paul’s – a group of us have been reading together the book The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren. I personally have found the book very challenging. It is the kind of book that makes you stop and think about your life and think about what you are doing and ask yourself if you are on the right track. What is God calling me to do, and how am I responding, or pretending to respond, or not responding at all? My class members, always gracious and encouraging, try to tell me that I am responding to God’s call, that I’m doing things that I don’t know the impact of, that the little things we do add up and reach people in ways we don’t always see. I agree with them in that – we don’t always realize how much good we are doing. But I also don’t want them to let me off the hook so easily. Admitting mistakes, admitting that we’ve done wrong, that I’ve done wrong – well, I don’t like to do these things. I don’t like being wrong! But if I can’t admit my sins and shortcomings even to God, then I really am in trouble.
Why do we want to put on such a good face for God? If we can’t admit our sin and brokenness to God, then truly, who can we really be ourselves in front of? Who can we really show our full selves too, and who can really know us fully? I fear that we’re afraid to show our brokenness to God because deep down, we’re afraid of what God will think of us, and what God will do to us if we don’t measure up, if we’re not good enough. I fear that at the core of things, we really don’t believe, still, that God loves us unconditionally, that God gives us a gift, a free gift of grace, and that there is nothing we can do to earn or un-earn God’s love for us. I can’t think of why else we would hesitate to tell God about our shortcomings, our failures, and our sins. In our hearts, and in our actions, we act as though we’re trying to convince our neighbors, ourselves, and God that we’re really good enough – good enough to be loved, good enough for grace.
But we’re missing the point - trying to pay for the gift. We act just like those hypocrites that Jesus talks about in our text from Matthew – we want very much to look like we’re doing all the right things. We want very much to be put together. But today, thank God, we begin a new season – the season of Lent. Lent is a season for penitence, repentance, admitting, confessing what we’ll barely even confess to ourselves – we are sinful. We stand in need of God’s grace. Lent is not about being put together. Lent is about being broken, and offering our brokenness to God.
Our reading from the Psalms brings us a prayer written from King David to God, written in the aftermath of the scandalous affair between David and Bathsheba, a woman who was already married to Uriah, one of David’s soldiers. David tried everything possible to keep things looking good in his kingdom – when he discovered that Bathsheba was pregnant with his child, he tried to pass the child off as Uriah’s. When that didn’t work, he had Uriah killed, but made his death simply look like a casualty of war. Anything David could do to avoid admitting that he had simply done wrong, sinned, he did. But this picture-perfect scene David was creating eventually crumbled, and David finally came to God to confess. “Have mercy on me, O God,” David prayed, “for I know my transgressions, and my sin I ever before me.” David finally understands what God truly wants from him – not the picture-perfect scene, but David’s broken heart: “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” The prophet Joel echoes these same sentiments: “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”
Today is a day to bring your brokenness to God, to offer the broken pieces of your life to God with an open and honest heart. We receive ashes tonight as a sign of our mortality, a reminder that we are human and finite. We receive ashes as symbols of repentance – we receive them to say we are sorry, we have sinned. We receive them as a symbol that sometimes we are burnt out and burnt up, and these ashes are all that are left from the fires. But ashes are a symbol too of life. I was talking with Jane Leonard yesterday, and she was telling me about a book she was reading that encouraged her to give her ashes to God. She reminded me of a verse from Isaiah that says that God takes our ashes of mourning and turns them into garlands of praise. That is what God’s love can do in our lives – God’s love can transform whatever it touches, and can take our burnt up ashes, can take our broken pieces, and from them, draw out blessings, draw out new life, and create in us that clean heart and new and right spirit that we so desire.
Come, and show God your brokenness. There is nothing you can show God that will keep God from loving you completely. Come, and give God your ashes. Give God your broken spirit. Give God your weeping and mourning and rent hearts. And God will give you a clean heart, and love without condition or price. Broken, let us come.
Amen.