“Better to be Broken” Vance L. Toivonen
READING Luke 6:17-26
He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. "Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets."
READING Meditations of a Hermit by Charles de Foucauld
We should pity the happy people. Pity those whose happiness, even though it be quite legitimate and innocent, keeps them attached to the world. God is good that he has so despoiled us of everything, that we can draw breath only by turning our heads towards him. How great is his mercy, how divine his goodness, for he has torn everything from us in order that we may be more completely his. So sufferers are the happy ones through the goodness of God.
SERMON
This cold weather has certainly taken me back to my first years in the ministry, on the prairie of North Dakota, where it was much colder this past week than it was here. I began writing this sermon on Tuesday morning, after a low of about 10 below here. In Osnabrock, North Dakota, where I started my ordained ministry, the overnight low was 31 below. Not that 20 negative degrees makes any difference when you’re already chilled to the bone; but it certainly gives me just one more reason to be grateful that I am here.
In the summer wheat and barley grow on that same prairie earth. I grew too, on that soil, both in the summer and in the winter. One of the most significant developmental steps I took while living there was to come to an awareness that I had grown up as an adult child of an alcoholic. This was something I had to discover, pieces I had to put together from the puzzle of my formative years. But having made this discovery I sought help. This is the point at which I began to make long trips to the big city of Grand Forks, a distance of 95 miles one way on Thursday evenings in order to attend an ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) support group.
This was a time in my life when I leaned very heavily on my faith in God, and on the loving support of others who gathered on those sometimes very frigid nights in Grand Forks. It was not just about knowing how, or even why, I was messed up, but about the hope that my life could indeed be better, richer, and more joyful into future days. My awareness of my own brokenness, my own flawed character, my own idiosyncrasies, and my own foibles thrust me into the arms of a loving God who embraced me just as I am. In the presence of others who also relied heavily on this divine and unconditional love I was nurtured and encouraged to grow through the difficult and painful unfolding of the truths about who I am.
I have no context for understanding those who do not know brokenness in one way, shape, or form. Neither, it seems, does Brother Charles, the author of our second reading (and I say Brother Charles because I have no idea how to pronounce his last name). Brother Charles was orphaned at the age of six and raised by his grandfather. He spent much of his younger life searching, on a faith journey not dissimilar perhaps to the faith journeys many of us find ourselves traveling.
He came into his Christian faith at the age of 28 and was ordained as a priest at the age of 43, when he chose to serve in regions of the Sahara among those who were “the furthest removed, the most abandoned.” He wanted to “shout the Gospel with his life.” And so he did. He died a tragic death in 1916, at the age of 59, when he was killed in his home by a band of marauders.
I share this only as a brief context for the words that inhabit that second reading. Clearly Brother Charles understood that it was the tragic and difficult aspects of our lives that turn our eyes toward God. We are reminded in these words, perhaps, of the story of Job in the Bible. This is the story of a man who had everything taken away from him, stripped away by a pact between God and Satan in order to test his faith. If you have never read this story, I would encourage you to do so, for it is a story played out again and again, on a daily basis on this planet. We may sit comfortably here in our warm homes, but somewhere in this world, and in this country, there is another Job whose faith is being tested every minute of every day.
The Sermon on the Mount, a piece of which is found in our first reading today, does not make any sense unless we place it in such a context. Brother Charles says, “sufferers are the happy ones, “ which is exactly what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the hungry, and blessed are the ones who are grieving.” The word for blessed has also been translated as “happy.” There is a resonance of joy in the suffering. And, perhaps, some lack of joy in a lack of suffering.
In her book When the Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd suggests that there are two kinds of suffering, creative suffering and neurotic suffering. She writes that neurotic suffering is evidenced by a “self-pitying style of living…Neurotic suffering is untransforming and isn’t undertaken for the reason of becoming more whole. It doesn’t end in resurrection but in despair and alienation.”
In contrast Kidd writes that “Creative suffering is the pain we encounter in confronting our lives honestly, expanding our vision, choosing a new way, owning our shadow(s), and healing wounds.” She suggests that the contrast between creative suffering and neurotic suffering is “Growth versus fallowness. Old wounds versus new healing. Freedom versus commitment. Choosing versus settling for. (And) Hope versus despair.” She quotes another author, Marion Woodman, who makes the following analogy: “Real suffering burns clean; neurotic suffering creates more and more soot.”
When we are broken, truly broken by the circumstances of life; when it all falls apart, we are often forced to engage in more creative suffering because we must lean more heavily on God and on others for aid. We become self-sufficiency-challenged, unable to go it alone. There are folks in New Orleans who still know this suffering even more than a year after the tragedy that took everything away from them. These are some of our American Jobs.
It is in times like these when autonomy is no longer an option. But creative suffering means we do not have to wait for some sort of tragic external circumstance to upset our lives. We can look within and find darker realms that need attention right now. We can explore the ways in which we cause suffering every day, our own suffering, and suffering of those who are closest to us. There is plenty of brokenness in all of our lives to explore if we will only embrace such truths about ourselves.
In twelve-step programs, like A.A., O.A., A.O.C.A., G.A., N.A. and ALANON it is essential to have two very key support systems in place for this process: A higher power, which many of us will likely call God, and a support group, those who travel with us into our own suffering and brokenness. I have often wished that the Church could pattern itself more and more after these support groups. I believe it is essential for the life and health of a congregation that every single individual who passes through the doors on a Sunday morning does so with a humility of heart and mind, a humility that is formed from the very clay of one’s brokenness, a humility that thrusts one into the loving arms of God’s unconditional love, a humility that seeks the embrace of those who gather around us, the ones seated right next to us in the pews today. Look into the eyes of anyone in this room right now and you will find there some brokenness, some pain, some suffering that needs the healing touch of a loving God, and the embrace of a loving community.
This is the best place for us to begin our faith life, not from a place of strength, but from a place of weakness; not from a place of knowing, but a place of not knowing; not from a place of comfort, but from a place of restlessness; not from a place of satiation, but from a place of hunger; not from a place of riches, but from a place of true poverty. Where we are headed as a community has a lot to do with where we start. Let me suggest to us this morning that it is better for us to be broken, and start from our true hunger for the unconditional love of God and the inviting embrace of one another.