Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from April 10, 2005

“God In the Brokenness”

Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Scriptures:

1 Peter 1:17-23

Luke 24:13-35

Behind every door is a story and, knocking on the door, I was never sure just what kind of story I would hear.  When some patients at the hospital were asked if they wanted to see the chaplain they said, “Okay,” with about as much enthusiasm as when they were asked if they wanted green Jell-0 instead of red.  Other patients specifically requested the see the chaplain.  The problem was I never knew which was which.  So, when I went knocking on a patient’s door, referral in hand, I had no idea what their expectation of a chaplain visit might be.

Now, combine that with the fact that Rhode Island is about 85% Roman Catholic and I was the Director of Pastoral Care in the state’s only Jewish Hospital.  You can only imagine the confusion that ensued for some people.  There was a lot of “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” kind of conversation as people tried to figure out what a Protestant minister was doing visiting a Roman Catholic patient in a Jewish hospital.  It was a great icebreaker.

One such visit brought me to the room of an eighty-six years old man in the surgical intensive care unit.  He was listed on the religion roster as “UNK” which means “Unknown religious affiliation”.  When I entered the room, he was resting with his eyes closed.  I thought perhaps he was sleeping but he opened his eyes and I introduced myself.  He motioned for me to sit down.

Under his hospital gown, I could see that he was very thin.  The machines on either side of the bed connected him to various bags of stuff that seeped quietly into his veins.  As I pulled up a chair to sit down, I noticed the IV’s in his right arm obscured several numbers of a tattoo.  He noticed me looking at them and said quietly, “Auschwitz”.  I silently nodded and pulled my chair closer, added an entry to the list of things I didn’t learn in seminary and prayed for grace not to say anything too stupid. 

Though a thick accent he said, “So, you are a rabbi?”  I briefly explained I was the interfaith chaplain, a Protestant minister.  He said, “Oh,” and didn’t say anything else.  The silent seconds seemed like hours as I waited for what was next.  “So”, he says, (he always began his sentences with “so”) “they tell me I am going to die.”  And he unfolded the story of his new diagnosis and prognosis.  Weakened from the surgery, he fatigued easily.  I agreed to return the following day.  I visited him daily for the two weeks he remained in the hospital and daily in all his subsequent hospitalizations until his death.  Those daily trips from my office to the surgical intensive care unit became a kind of mazed road for me.  

As he told his story, I saw the essence of his faith.  Knowing what it was like to have nothing, he readily shared with many people.  Knowing what it was like to be lonely, there was always room at his table.  Knowing what it was like to grieve, he always sat Shiva with his neighbors and friends.  Knowing what it was like to be cut off from the Torah, he had spent the ensuing years studying with his minion.  There was a sadness in so many places of his story but not a trace of bitterness.  He taught me about humility and gentleness and perseverance and faith. 

As he grew weaker, it was more difficult for him to talk for any length of time.  So often, we would just sit there and the silence that was so uncomfortable that first day became as routine as the broth on his lunch tray.  As the days ticked by and the fullness of his days came to sharper focus, I thanked him for sharing the mitzvah, the blessing, of sharing his final days with me.  I told him that I was blessed by hearing the sacred story of his life.  He said, “So, I call you rabbi from now on.”  It is a moment I will always treasure.

Death occasions the telling of stories.  For those whose lives are drawing to a close, there’s always a review, a telling of the stories, sharing of the pieces that stand out, whether because of great joy or profound sorrow.

When I meet with families to plan funerals or memorial services, I am oftentimes privileged to hear them tell the stories of their loved one’s life and how it has changed theirs.  To tell stories is how we make sense of our days, how we discover the holy in the midst of what is painful and profound in this weird and wonderful journey called life.

Cleopas and his unnamed companion (I like to think it was his wife) are telling the stories of Jesus, remembering things he had said, stories of miracles they heard, perhaps recalling how he took a little child in his arms and offered a blessing while those around him scoffed and scowled. 

The Risen One draw nears to them and the storytelling changes.  We had hoped he was the one.  There is the heart of the story.  We had hoped he was the one.  So much of what they were grieving was their own broken dream and their own disappointed hope.  It’s a familiar place:  we had hoped.  There are as many ways to fill in the blanks as there are folks who people the pews of churches around the world.  We had hoped for a new job, for a child, for a cure. 

Like Cleopas and his unnamed companion, we learn to live in the broken hope because, sometimes, disappointment is more familiar than resurrection.  We exist in a less than whole relationship; we tolerate prejudice and mediocrity; we expect less than the best from ourselves and others.  Even in the church, it’s sometimes easy to settle.  There is a predictable way of doing things.  Someone once commented that the epitaph of the church will be, “But we’ve always done it that way.”  We hold on to the familiar because it is familiar and, in so doing, we ignore the possibility and, indeed, the command for new life.  We amble along in the broken dream muttering, “But we had hoped….”  And that’s the place where Jesus meets Cleopas and the unnamed companion:  in the disappointment, in the brokenness, in the dream gone awry.  The Risen One comes to them in that moment.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “He comes to the disappointed, the doubtful, the disconsolate. He comes to those who do not know their Bibles, who do not recognize him even when they are walking right beside him. He comes to those who have given up and are headed back home, which makes this whole story a story about the blessedness of brokenness.” (Home By Another Way)

That makes the whole story about us and the rest of humanity because  brokenness is one thing we all have in common.  Our eyes are as apt to be kept from recognizing him as any one else’s. 

Schweitzer’s commentary on Luke said that what stands in the way of their faith is the belief in an image of Jesus that does not describe Christ.  Sometimes we have to let go of the Jesus we think we know in order to embrace the Christ who is.  Sometimes we have to let go of the way we think things are in order to see them as the way they might become.  We spend a lifetime learning how to hold on and how to let go, telling the story over and over and over again so we can find ourselves in the unfolding.

Things change in our lives all the time.  Sometimes we embrace the change, sometimes we resist.  Oftentimes, we only recognize something about it retrospect, when we are telling the story; when someone can reflect back to us an insight that we may have missed.  But what seems clear in it all is that it’s when we risk telling the story, when we risk the terror that we can discover the resurrection. 

It wasn’t always easy to receive the story of my friend from Auschwitz.  There were times when the sadness of it was all but unbearable.  But in the telling, there came a wholeness for him and an insight for me.  It became more than the sum of its parts and I learned something about God and about myself in the process of learning about another human being. 

“I guess the reality is that Jesus seems to prefer working with broken people, with broken dreams in a broken world.  It comes to full circle when, later on in the story, someone hands him a loaf of bread and he takes it and blesses it and breaks it and gives it away because it it’s all he knows how to do.  It’s what he did with his own flesh and blood because that was the way that God showed him:  to take care of the rest of us; to take what we have been given, whether we like it or not; and to bless it—to find a way to say ‘Thank you’ for it—whether it’s sweet and satisfying or whether it is wretched and painful;” to break it up and pass it around; to take the risk to share it; and perhaps, on the other side of it, to end up with some holy heart burn because we have discovered something of God in our midst.  (Barbara Brown Taylor.  Ibid)

That broken loaf may bring all of us broken ones together into one body, and there we recognize the Risen Lord in our midst.  It comes oftentimes when we look over our shoulders because we are so often looking for the burning bush in our religious experience.  

My own experience tells me it comes more often as a series of glowing twigs.  But the common denominator is risking the story, speaking the truth of our lives and knowing that there is no place the journey can take us where resurrection cannot find us. 

Amen.