Sermon for May 28, 2006

The novel “Broken For You” Where is God In the Pieces?

5th in a series on Spirituality and The Arts

By

Rev. Cindy Bates

Psalm 147:1-3, 7-11

¹ Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting. ² The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel^{. 3} He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.

⁷ Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre. ⁸ He covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills. ⁹ He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry. ¹⁰ His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;  ¹¹ but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.

Matthew 26:26-28

²⁶ While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." ²⁷ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you; ²⁸ for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

As you know we are in the midst of a sermon series on Spirituality and the Arts.  Today we are looking at a wonderful piece of writing by Stephanie Kallos entitled Broken for You.  The Washington Post referred to this book as “a novel of redemption.”  Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees praised the work by saying it was not only a “wonderful, engaging story” but that it was also full of “wisdom and soulfulness.” I would say that this book is about the brokenness that comes with life and it is about the challenge of doing something with the broken pieces to create something new.  All of the characters in the story have been broken in some way, and somehow their lives intertwine in ways that show that brokenness can not only be restored, but that salvation, life, often comes from loss.  Following this particular theme was not necessarily a well thought out idea for a Memorial Day weekend sermon.  It just sort of “happened” as we announced the line-up of subjects over these several weeks.  But, as I reflected on the layers of meaning found within the pages of this novel and once again thought about all the reasons we observe “Memorial Day”, there seemed to be a coming together of remembering our losses, acknowledging the pain that comes with loss, and celebrating life in the midst.

Some of you know that a favorite quote of mine comes from a play called The Great God Brown by Eugene O’Neill.  At one point the soulful, wounded, main character says, “Man is born broken.  He lives by mending.  The grace of God is glue.”  I always wanted the opportunity to dialog a little with O’Neill about what he meant about being “born broken.”  It almost sounds like he was really influenced by the “original sin” theory somewhere along the way. I can’t think about the miracle of a life and see that as a beginning of brokenness. But, I love the image that “the grace of God is glue”…that God is there to help us put things back together when the realities of life come crashing in around us, when brokenness is what we experience, what we feel.   I loved reading the novel Broken for You because it was a powerful reminder of the restorative nature of persons living in relationship, in community, being able to acknowledge personal loss in order to find solace and move beyond the loss to a new place.  It reminded me of what “church” is supposed to be about.

Here’s the Bates “Cliff Notes” version of the story line.  Margaret Hughes is a 75 year old, very wealthy woman who lost a son in a car accident when he was only 8.  Her husband left two years later, remarried and began a new life.  For years she lived in a self-imposed exile, alone in the mansion left to her by her father, who had made his great wealth by buying and collecting porcelain dishes and figurines stolen from Jewish evacuees during the Holocaust.  As the story begins Margaret receives a diagnosis that gives her only a short time to live.  Given that her life of late hadn’t been lived with much joy, and in fact, had been laden with a lot of guilt and pain, she’s not quite sure if this is really bad news.  She makes her way from the doctor’s office to a dessert café and orders four desserts as she ponders what might be next.  (Stephanie Kallos, the author, does have a wicked sense of humor!)  She asks the young waitress, “Nose Ring”, as she refers to her, what she would do if she only had a year or two to live. “How would you spend your time?” Margaret asks.  And the young woman replies, “I suppose I’d think about whatever it is that scares me the most, relationship-wise, I mean- and then do it.  Do the opposite of what I had always done….break all your old habits.”  So Margaret began to do just that…even breaking more than her old habits.  She takes in a boarder, a young woman who was abandoned by her parents when she was a small child, and who has been broken in many places.  Wanda, the young woman is obsessed with searching for an old boyfriend who, she is sure, is sorry he left her and their relationship.  There are many broken characters that come into the home and the lives of these two women, and somehow restoration and redemption keep happening out of the brokenness.  An obvious metaphor develops as Margaret decides to destroy the stolen porcelain that her father had given her, smashing them to pieces, and Wanda, has an innate ability to use the pieces to create beautiful mosaics.  Well, you begin to get the idea.

We may not have experienced the life experiences of the characters in this novel, but we can all relate to the ways in which life experiences and relationships batter and bruise us and some times cause us to break in places.  What do you think?  Do you experience the grace of God as glue for the brokenness in your own life story?  The Psalmist in today’s scripture said, “(God) heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” 

When I began thinking about what God’s healing might look like or feel like I immediately thought of Jesus and how he constantly approached all the brokenness in the lives of his fellow human beings.  He didn’t try to avoid the brokenness.  Whether it was a brokenness in body or mind or spirit, he saw it, acknowledged it and believed persons could move beyond it. He believed that persons and lives could be transformed.  He would say things, like, “Zacheus, come down from that tree.  I want to have dinner with you tonight.”  It didn’t matter that everyone was saying, “He’s so broken. Don’t do it. He’s a crook.  You can’t eat with him.”  Jesus responded with something like, “That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to bring life to those who are lost.”  He would see things, like noticing a woman whose spirit was so broken by life that for eighteen years she had been bent over.  And it was almost as though even noticing her, even calling out to her, helped her to straighten up.  He would do things, like respond to someone’s pain and brokenness with compassion and understanding as when he began to weep when he saw the pain of Mary and Martha when their brother, his friend, Lazarus, had died.   He would believe things about the power of love and forgiveness like when he saw a woman who was going to be stoned because people believed she was an adulteress, and he said, “I do not condemn you.  Go and sin no more.” If we believe Jesus, more than any other, was able to be an incarnation of God’s love, what does that say about God knowing about our brokenness, and wanting to be with us, wanting to heal us?

There is a Hebrew phrase that surfaces and serves as an imperative for us in Broken for You. The phrase is “tikkun olam’ and it means “repair the world.”  That sounds like a daunting task, doesn’t it?  The past couple of weeks, as Disciple Bible classes have been coming to a close before next week’s graduation, I have had the privilege of sharing Holy Communion with several of those classes and often the discussion has raised questions like: After sharing the experience of study and spiritual growth in this group, what is next?  How will this experience shape how I will live my life from this point?  Individuals in a group the other day began to talk about how looking at life and the world with all of its problems and pain can feel so overwhelming out there…but, when we bring it down to a level in here, there really is a difference we can make in just the way we respond to persons and situations and needs around us, close to us.  Our actions really can have that “ripple effect” that will bring about transformation for our world.  Repair the world.

And what might our part be in healing the brokenness in ourselves or in another? Maybe the first step is just opening ourselves to the possibility that something flawed, broken, chipped, cracked can be made into something new.  That may sound easy, but I know in my own life when I confront brokenness in myself or in another, my first tendency is to make a judgment, and my judgmental attitude often derails a possibility for transformation and change even before I begin to act.  You know what I mean…those little flags that pop up in my head that say, “There is no way they are ever going to change.”  Or “This is too big a problem.  There is nothing I can do.”  Or “Maybe if I ignore it, it will go away.”   Wanda, the young woman boarder in the novel illustrates her response to the brokenness in her life this way. “She checked in with her heart.  She could picture it in there in its calcified condition…If someone were to autopsy her heart, they’d find traces of life, evidence of eons gone by. Times when she had been able to feel and the feelings made imprints.  Maybe her heart was wearing a cast….No, her heart was finished.  Further handling could only result in cracks and fractures.  People could cut themselves on the edges of her heart, she was sure of it.”  Have we checked in with our heart lately?

Christina Baldwin in her book, Making Sense of Our Lives Through the Power and Practice of Story, tells the story of a tribe in southern Africa called Babemba in which a person doing something wrong, something that destroys this delicate social net, brings all the work in the village to a halt.  The people gather around the “offender” and one by one they begin to recite everything he has done right in his life…every good deed, thoughtful behavior, act of social responsibility.  These things have to be true about the person and spoken honestly, but the time honored consequence of misbehavior is to appreciate that person back into the better part of himself.  The person is given the chance to remember who he is and why he is important to the life of the village.  Isn’t that a positive, powerful way to be open to the possibility for healing in a broken situation!  It starts with the belief that something good can come from something broken.  The tribe literally helps “re-member”, helps the person put himself back together, restore himself.

No one likes brokenness.  It isn’t something we go after or look for…it just happens.   It is a condition of life and no one knew that anymore than the one who was willing to face life with all its brokenness and still see the goodness in life, in people, in God….the one who was willing to say in the midst of it all, “…my life broken for you.”

Toward the end of the novel, the matriarch figure, Margaret, throws out a line as her life is coming to a close.  She says in front of her beloved, cracked, injured, flawed, broken family of friends, “Be happy.  We’re worth more broken.”

And then, in a kind of summation of what this novel is really all about, the author’s voice can be heard reflecting on life as she has experienced it.  She says, “The broken are not always gathered together, of course, and not all mysteries of the flesh are solved.  We speak of ‘senseless tragedies, but really: Is there any other kind?....Loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes follow them as long as possible as they recede from view….we never stop looking, not even after those we love become part of the unreachable horizon.”  And then she says what might be my favorite line in the whole novel,   “We can never stop carrying the heavy weight of love on this pilgrimage; we can only transfigure what we carry.  We can only shatter it and send it whirling into the world so that it can take shape in some new way.”

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