Thursday, March 1, 2012

Reflection: The Renewing Prayer of Brokenness (February 29, 2012)

Lent Mid-Week 2
Psalm 69; Jeremiah 30:12-22; 1 Peter 5:6-11; Matthew 12:9-21


Things break.  We expect things that are poorly made to break, but we also realize that even the best quality products, tools, and machines eventually break.  Brokenness is a part of our fallen world.  While we may share the acceptance that things break with previous generations, we are very different than they were in how we respond when something is broken.  It used to be that our first response to something breaking was to have it repaired.  Communities across our country typically included a repair shop or two among the merchants of Main Street.  Now it's difficult to find a TV repair shop or a place to have your shoes resoled.  When things break in our lives we replace them rather than repair them.  The old is cast aside and the new is acquired.  While this approach may make a lot of sense economically (it is very often cheaper to replace than to repair many things), it has created an attitude toward brokenness in our culture that does not serve us well.  Beyond the casting aside of things that are broken, we've grown far too comfortable with casting aside broken people.

People break.  We are not excluded from the brokenness of our fallen world.  Unlike the things in our lives that break, broken people may continue to function long after they break.  Our brokenness is much more than a physical breaking, it is first and foremost a spiritual brokenness.  It's to this kind of brokenness that God declares, "Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing" (Jeremiah 30:12).  He's telling us that we are broken and that we cannot be repaired.  We should, like the broken things in our lives, be thrown away and forgotten about.  But rather than discard us, God embraces our brokenness.

It's through our brokenness that we become keenly aware of our need for God and realize that the world is against us.  Although the world makes room for us and makes use of us when we are strong and productive, once we break — and we all eventually break — it quickly casts us aside and replaces us with what is new.  Unable to fix our sinful lives, our hurting loved ones, our troubled relationships, our shattered dreams, or anything else in our broken world, we are moved to call out to the God of the brokenhearted.  We pray with the psalmist, "Do not let the flood waters engulf me or the depths swallow me up or the pit close its mouth over me.  Answer me, O Lord, out of the goodness of Your love" (Psalm 69:15-16).  And God answers our brokenness.

What is God's answer to people who are broken and of no value to the world?  Restoration.  More than fixing what is broken so that it works again, God works through our brokenness as a master craftsman restoring us to our original function and purpose.  He does this by entering our broken world and being broken Himself.  Through the suffering and death of Jesus, who was given to us in answer to our prayers of brokenness, God makes us new.  Even better than new, God restores broken people to the function, condition, and the relationship that we had before brokenness entered into our world.


Audio file of the homily based on this reflection

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