"Restoring Relationships: Loving Broken Things"
The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland
“Restoring Relationships: Loving Broken Things”
Rev. Amy Morgan
October 10, 2021
Romans 5:1-11
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-- though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.
8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
9 Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.
10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.
11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Mark 10:17-31
As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
18 Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
19 You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'"
20 He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth."
21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
22 When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"
24 And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
26 They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?"
27 Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."
28 Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you."
29 Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,
30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age-- houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions-- and in the age to come eternal life.
31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."
Archie loved broken things. He would spend Saturdays going from garage sale to garage sale, collecting bikes with broken chains, lawn mowers with broken starters, toys and tools in need of repair. His pole barn was filled with these items, each a work in progress, few of them complete. But it was a joy for him to putter out there among his broken things, occasionally being able to restore one of them to wholeness.
Archie didn’t talk much, so I can’t say for sure, but I wonder if part of Archie’s love for broken things came out of his own brokenness. He was a veteran of WWII, served in the Conservation Corp planting thousands of saplings in upper Michigan, and worked for General Motors. He was a strong man, and an excellent hunter. But in the latter decades of his life, his body had failed him. He was in constant pain and needed a motorized scooter to get around. He couldn’t see or hear well. He was thin and hunched and…broken.
But Archie was also loved. By his family and friends in the small town he’d lived in almost all his life. At his funeral, the church was packed to the gills, and his great-grandchildren planted a tree in his memory that stands tall and strong today. These great-grandchildren never knew Archie when he was a soldier and a strong worker. They only knew him once he was broken. But they loved him, just that way. His wide grin and secret handshake. Tinkering with him in the pole barn and eating hamburgers on the porch. They loved him and his broken things.
What we hear in Paul’s letter to the Roman church is that God also loves broken things. God loves the weak, the ungodly, sinners, enemies. And not in a sentimental, Hallmark card sort of way. God proved that love in the death of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God became a broken thing, experienced all the brokenness of humanity, even died for love of us, for love of a humanity so broken it would nail people to a cross.
This love is hard to understand. It was hard for people around Jesus to understand when he was alive. A man came to Jesus trying to understand what this was all about. He had “many possessions,” the bible tells us. He’s probably either gotten a large inheritance or plans to receive one someday. But he also wants to know how to inherit something he knows is more valuable than everything he currently owns or could ever expect to get. He wants to know how to inherit eternal life.
He’s done all the right things. He has kept the commandments, at least the ones Jesus lists off for him. Curiously, the commandments not mentioned by Jesus include the commandment against idolatry and the commandment to keep the Sabbath. And I wonder if Jesus left these out on purpose. I wonder if the wealthy man had struggled with those commandments, if he wouldn’t have been able to answer Jesus so confidently that he had kept those ones. I wonder if his many possessions sometimes operated as idols and if working on the Sabbath, or forcing others to work on the Sabbath, had helped him acquire some of those “many possessions.”
But it isn’t the keeping or breaking of commandments that will ultimately allow him to receive the inheritance he is seeking from Jesus. Jesus tells him he has to sell everything, give the money to the poor, and follow him.
And this breaks the man. He is grieved and goes away.
And Jesus tells his disciples that it is hard for wealthy people to enter the kingdom of God. We often hear this as a judgement on the wealthy. If we all just did this simple thing Jesus tells us – sell everything and give the money to the poor – we’d be better Christians and better people and we’d live happily ever after with Jesus. But we don’t do it, and we’re all wealthy according to global standards, and so we should all be sad and ashamed.
But that’s not the end of the story. That’s not what Jesus is trying to teach his disciples here. He doesn’t shame the man. He proclaims a word of hope. What the man cannot do for himself, God can do for him.
Because God loves broken things.
But the world we live in does not love broken things.
We live in a performance-obsessed society. We curate our lives on social media. We memorialize our accomplishments. We accumulate new things to replace what is broken. We maintain an appearance that is as close to ideal as possible.
But behind the filtered photos and closed doors with a new wreath for each season are broken, broken things. The parent addicted to alcohol. The couple who can’t talk to each other. The gambling problem. The depression or crippling anxiety. We weep through the night, and get up the next day, wash our face, and plaster on a smile for the world.
This has become especially problematic through this pandemic season. As we watch ourselves on screen all day, we have become even more concerned about our appearances. We may joke about wearing pajama pants under our dress shirt, but we’ve gone to great lengths to curate our backgrounds. And when the camera turns off, the brokenness is still there, where no one can see it and we can’t escape it.
We don’t boast in our sufferings, as Paul and his friends did. Because no one comes in first in our society for showing up in all our brokenness. No one gets ahead by owning up to their mess. We love people at their best and ignore them at their worst.
And because this is so normative in our society, in our everyday life, it can’t help but affect our relationship with God. We can’t help but feel, like the man in Mark’s gospel, that we have to show up for God as our best selves. Or God is cast as this judgmental authority figure, like Blake Shelton on The Voice, who we have to somehow impress enough to get to the next level of the good life.
And what happens is that we stop showing up for our relationship with God altogether. Maybe we come to church, or tune in. Maybe we’ll help out in ways we feel capable. Maybe we’ll give a little more to the stewardship campaign this year, or maybe we’ll attend a class that might help us do better.
But it’s hard for us to have a real, authentic relationship with God when we can’t be our full, broken selves, when we have to pretend to have it all together. God loves broken things, but it’s really hard for someone with imposter syndrome to accept and experience that love and to live in the eternal reign of God. If we are trying to pretend to be good enough for God, but know deep down that we aren’t, the only way we can really relate to God is through a lens of shame. And that will send us walking away, sadly, just like the man in Mark’s gospel.
The good news is, we have a space and community that is just like Archie’s pole barn. 1st on 4th is filled with a collection of broken things, in various states of restoration, all lovingly brought together and cared for by a God who loves broken things, and who has experienced brokenness. In this space and community, our relationship with God is being restored. Because here, we invite one another’s brokenness and don’t ask people to show up at their best. Here, we watch the restoration process unfold in each other’s lives, celebrating one another’s progress and supporting each other through frustrating setbacks. We share extra parts and sit with each other when we’re stuck and can’t move. We talk about what isn’t working, knowing that maybe it can’t be fixed, but we’re going to love each other anyway, and we’ll keep your place here. No one gets thrown away here.
We don’t want anyone walking away from this space and this community feeling shamed because of their brokenness. Instead, we want everyone to know that anything and everything is possible with God, and that God loves us exactly in our brokenness. All we have to do is stop pretending we’ve got it all sorted.
As we begin this season of stewardship, yes, we will need to examine our relationship with money and possessions. But what we’re really looking at is our relationships with God, the creation, and each other. The Session developed and adopted a new mission statement for our church last summer that I think really names the thing this church does best and what our community needs most and is exactly what God is calling us to be and do. The mission statement says that “1st on 4th is the Heart of Christ in the Heart of Loveland: a space and community restoring relationships between God, creation, and humanity.” Restoring relationships is work that has impacts on not just our money and possessions, but on our time, our activities, our everyday choices, and our attitudes and perspectives.
Our support of the ministry at 1st on 4th doesn’t make us better Christians, better followers of Jesus. It doesn’t make us good enough to be in relationship with God. Our gifts to this ministry – whatever they may be – are a testimony to the work of restoration we have experienced and witnessed here. Our gifts allow us to participate in restoring relationships with God.
We know it is impossible for us to give up everything and follow Jesus, just like it is impossible for us to do enough, be enough, to earn God’s love. But intentional stewardship of the gifts we have been given – gifts of money and possessions, yes, but also gifts of relationships, our church family, the natural resources we enjoy – stewardship of all these things invites us into a space where we can see the brokenness of our relationship with things, to appreciate and even love broken things in our own lives. Knowing our brokenness, the limits of our humanity, the constraints of living in the world we live in allows us to see once again how much God loves broken things.
Stewardship is part of how our relationship with God gets restored. Because God isn’t waiting for us to give more or give enough. God loves us, no matter what. And God makes us a way for us to live in God’s eternal reign, no matter what. No matter what we have or what we give. No matter how rich or how poor. No matter how faithful or how cynical. No matter what, God loves us. And God didn’t wait for us to get our act together to love us all the way to death. God died for terrible people, not perfect people. And so what we give is an offering of gratitude. Pure gratitude. For everything in this broken world. And for God’s love of it all.
That gift of gratitude will allow 1st on 4th to continue sharing that love with our community and with all those we reach online. It will keep this space available for broken people to come and to be loved, in this beloved collection of broken things. Here, addiction doesn’t hide behind closed doors and sadness isn’t covered up until the camera turns off. Here, anger and resentment aren’t swept under the rug and depression and anxiety aren’t treated as personal failings. Here, there is a space and community where we can bring our broken selves, where everyone is welcome to come with their missing pieces and rusty hearts, and to be loved as they are and restored to relationship with the God who loves them eternally.
To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
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