Strong in the Broken Places
John 6:56-69
A Sermon
Preached at Centenary United Methodist Church
Richmond, VA
August 26, 2012
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God’s love made real in the brokenness of
Jesus’ body and the spilling of the blood is a constant reminder that it is in
the circumstances of brokenness where find God’s presence most real.
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It’s
a relief for some of us to come to the end of this long series of Gospel
readings and sermons on John 6. What
more could be said about the deeper meaning of the feeding of a crowd of over
5000 by Jesus with a few loaves and fish?
What more is there to reflect on besides the reminder of God’s provision
for us with daily bread like the manna God provided the children of Israel in
the wilderness? What more can be said
about the eucharistic imagery or the offer Jesus makes to each of us to be the
true bread of life?
I
think that there may yet be one more thing.
It’s not quite as explicit as some of these other themes, but it’s a
truth that has gotten my attention.
Perhaps it’s why I found myself drawn to want to think more deeply and
prayerfully about this passage. If
there is any validity in this hunch, then perhaps it explains, at least
partially, why the people reacted to
this teaching as they did when it was all spoken, compiled, and handed on from
community to community.
At
the end of it all, at the end of the miracle and the offer of Jesus that anyone
who eats the bread he could provide, bread of his flesh, and the true drink of
his blood, many people simply cannot receive the gift. Yes, the imagery may have been too bold and
graphic. It could have been that people
did misunderstand the references to eating flesh and drinking blood. It could have been that people simply could
not comprehend God’s intimate, life-giving presence being transmitted to them
through the life and words of an ordinary human being. John reports, “When many of his disciples
heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’” John notes that many of the Jewish leaders
found Jesus’ words offensive. Others
who’d been attracted by the miracle left.
At this point, Jesus is aware, John says, that one of his own would betray
him. “Because of this teaching many of
his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him,” John says.
Was
there anything else? I might be wrong,
but I think the offense of Jesus’ words was not just about the jarring physical
imagery or even the announcement that God was present in a unique life-giving
way in Jesus. Yes that was part of
it. I think that part of the offense for
some of the hearers came in the vision of God Jesus presented. For Jesus’ claim is that God’s presence was
coming to the world not through worldly success, fame, or military
greatness. It was being offered to
people through human brokenness. It was
not a body strengthened and sculpted through vigorous exercise or performance
enhancing drugs, but a broken body, a weakened body, a defeated body that was offered
as the key to life. It was not blood
shed in the pursuit of worldly power or domination or even an act of defiant
revolution, but blood shed because of deep love. Jesus body and blood were signs of brokenness
rather than strength, defeat rather than victory. That was offensive to those who wanted an
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God who could send Caesar’s armies running
in fear. And I expect that that kind of
God, a God who comes to us in humility, a God who allows his chosen
representative to be killed rather than to kill, is still offensive to many of
us.
But
some of us need to be reminded that is through this God we know in Jesus who
does not shun the broken places of our world or our lives, that we ourselves
can discover healing and life and power.
It
was the Greek philosophers who influenced early Christian theology who stressed
God’s distance from the world and made Christians wonder if God could really
have suffered in Jesus, since suffering involves change, and change is not
something people in the ancient world could associate with the mental image of
deity they cherished.
But
one of the central and most mysterious claims of the biblical story is that God
suffered in Jesus, that God is not too far removed to suffer with us.
When
I was in college at Oral Roberts University, theology majors had to write a
Senior Paper. Now you might think that
the only things people could study there were how to speak in tongues, perform
miracles of healing, develop television ministries, or articulate pre-millennial
pre-tribulation dispensational theology.
But there was in fact a remarkable spirit of openness and at the time I
was there a strong United Methodist presence.
I’ll admit I was a little wary when I told my professors what I wanted
to write about. I wanted to write about Jurgen
Moltmann. Moltmann was a hot topic in
those days with his theology of hope.
His theology was a unique blend of influences ranging from Martin
Luther, his teacher Karl Barth, other theologians of hope like Wolfhart
Pannenberg and Johann Baptiste Metz, the prophets of the Old Testament, and an
atheistic philosopher influenced by Marxism named Ernst Bloch. Moltmann has continued to write prolifically
and I suppose many would consider him one of the four or five most influential
theologians of the twentieth century.
Moltmann
was shaped by the suffering of World War II and the great theological questions
that arose from the holocaust. One of
his most important books is entitled The
Crucified God. And one of the main
problems Moltmann wrestles with in that book is how to understand the suffering
of God. Patripassianism, the idea that
God the father, the first person of the trinity could suffer, was regarded in
some quarters as a theological mistake if not a heresy. But Moltmann believed that in all the awful
events of the twentieth century, in Jesus Christ, God had suffered with
humanity, not abandoning us to our evil devices, trying reach out to us to
redeem us in the worst of human circumstances.
In other words his view of the atonement was not anything like that many
people reject because in envisioning God the Father offering up God the Son as
a sacrifice for sin that resembles some form of cosmic child abuse. Rather, Moltmann argued that on the cross,
God himself enters humanity’s godforsakenness and takes the suffering of the
world into Godself.
He
explained his thinking like this:
“When
God becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth, he not only enters into the finitude of
man, but in his death on the cross also enters into the situation of man’s godforsakenness…He humbles himself and
takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so
that all the godless and godforsaken can experience communion with him.”[1]
To explain his understanding of the atonement, Moltmann shares the story of Elie Wiesel recounted in Weisel’s book Night.
Standing in a crowd being forced to watch
the hanging of an angel-faced child at Auschwitz, Wiesel heard someone ask,
“For God’s sake, where is God?” “And from within me, I heard a voice answer,”
Wiesel writes, “‘Where is He? This is where—hanging here from this gallows.’”
[2]
Reflecting on Wiesel’s statement, Moltmann writes,
“If that is to be taken seriously, it must also be said that, like the cross
of Christ,
even
Auschwitz is in God himself. Even Auschwitz is taken up into
the grief of the Father, the surrender of the Son and the power of the
Spirit…As Paul says in I Cor. 15, only with the resurrection of the dead, the
murdered and the gassed, only with the healing of those in despair who bear
lifelong wounds, only with the abolition of all rule and authority, only with
the annihilation of death will the Son hand over the kingdom to the Father.
Then God will turn his sorrow into eternal joy…
God in Auschwitz and Auschwitz in the
crucified God—that is the basis for a real hope which both embraces and
overcomes the world, and the ground for a love which is stronger than death and
can sustain death.”
[3]
As I was thinking back to discovering those words many years ago, I realized
that there are many questions I have about God, many days the questions
outnumber any sense of having answers.
But there is one thing I believe more strongly with each passing day—God
does not abandon us in our godforsaknness.
God does not abandon us in our darkness, in our suffering.
Rather God goes to those places, meets us
there, refusing ever to forsake us.
God
is present in the broken places, the dark places of human existence.
That is I believe what the message of the
cross is finally about if it is about anything.
The broken flesh and shed blood of Jesus is a powerful reminder of that
truth.
Believing this makes a profound difference in the way we look at our own
brokenness.
Believing God is with us
even in the most difficult godforsaken circumstances gives us courage and
strength that is, I believe, explicable in no other way.
Some of you will remember the story of Joni Erackson Toda.
She was in a diving accident at the age of 17
which left her a quadripalegic.
After
two long years of rehabilitation, she emerged with skills she’d never had and a
new determination to help other people.
She learned how to paint with a brush between her teeth.
Her high detail fine art paintings and prints
are sought after and collected.
She has
written 70 books and received awards so numerous they would take several pages
to list.
She is also a singer and songwriter.
One of her songs is entitled : “When Pretty
Things Get Broken.”
Here are the words:
My life was just like china, a lovely thing to me,
Full of porcelain promises of all that I might be.
But fragile things do slip and fall as ev'rybody knows,
And when my vase came crashing down those tears began to flow.
But don't we all cry when pretty things get broken?
Don't we all sigh at such an awful loss?
Jesus will dry those tears as He has spoken
'Cause He was the One broken on the cross.
But Jesus is the Porcelain Prince.
His promises won't break.
His holy Word holds fast and sure.
His love no one can shake.
So if your life is shattered by sorrow, pain or sin,
His healing love will reach right down and make you whole again.[4]
Christ meets us in the broken places giving us strength we never knew
we had.
That strength in life’s broken places isn’t just given to a few who go
on to become highly publicized examples.
It happens anywhere Christ is allowed to be present in those broken and
painful places of life.
It was Saturday night before my first Sunday in a new appointment. I had a call that a woman had committed
suicide. I rushed to the home—a
beautiful farm in a valley surrounded by mountains. I didn’t know anyone. There must have been fifty people there,
family, friends trying to comfort the husband.
The police were still there collecting evidence and doing their work. I met the man that night. It was awkward to say the least. I learned that this was not the only tragedy
this family had known. Twenty years
before the couple’s youngest son had been hit by a car crossing a busy highway
and killed. His wife, like him, still
grieved that loss, but he thought she’d been doing better. He said that morning had been one of the best
mornings they’d shared together. They’d
had breakfast, talked of hopes and dreams they had for the future. He’d gone down to the barn to do some chores,
waiting for his wife to join him. She
never came. He was concerned. He went to the house and found her lying in
the yard with a gunshot wound. You can
imagine how horrible that was for him to absorb.
Well, we got through the first Sunday, and we began planning a
funeral. Through that process, I got to
know the new widower better. I went by
on a somewhat regular basis for awhile to check on him. Not long before this tragedy, he’d taken a
new job working for a large construction firms.
He was extraordinarily talented as a builder and contractor and very well
respected.
I’ll be honest with you. I
really wondered if he was ever going to be able to dig out of the deep hole he
was in. Sometimes when I stopped by the
shades would be drawn. He didn’t feel
like getting out, eating.
But slowly some things started to change. People from the church kept calling and going
by. The family had become somewhat inactive
before this event and many of the people really didn’t know them well. His sisters and mother kept going by taking
food. And he started coming back to
church--hardly ever missed a Sunday. It
was hard. And he began to look better
and occasionally smile. He got
reconnected to the church and instead of becoming bitter and angry because of
the terrible suffering he and his wife had endured, he got reconnected to his
faith. He went to counseling, realizing
he needed help.
Within a year or so he took the
risk of dating again. And within two
years he was leading a remodeling project of the sanctuary. He joined a men’s group on a mission trip.
And the next year he was leading the trip.
And I heard from him not long ago and he was ready to remarry. I didn’t know how such pain could be healed,
how such brokenness could be overcome.
But the truth is, through his family, his friends, and the church, God
met him right there. God did not abandon
or forsake him, though he felt that that was exactly what had happened.
And that is the good news we all need to hear. The God we know in Jesus is not above being
broken, bruised, and bloodied by the pain human beings bear. And it is in that brokenness signified by
Christ’s body and blood that we are reminded we are never alone. It is in that brokenness that we are made
whole.
On the days I am not sure what I believe, I remind myself that I
believe that. And remembering that I
believe that, I realize that if that is
where and how God meets us, that God is calling us to meet him there—in those
places and people who are being stretched, strained and broken by life’s difficulties. It’s in those places we discover just how
great, good, and powerful God really is!
[1] Jürgen
Moltmann, The Crucified God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 276.
[2] Elie Wiesel, Night,
Bantam, 1982, pp. 75-6.
[4]
http://restorationheart.blogspot.com/2008/08/when-pretty-things-get-broken.html
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