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On the Other Side of HeartbreakFebruary 08, 2009 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost I spent time this week with a former parishioner who confided to me that he was “crushed by the burden of life.” Death, illness, financial uncertainty, and loneliness had descended upon him over the last year and he was ready for a reprieve. Feeling especially gloomy that day, he suspected that his burden had only just begun. I knew he needed a comforting word, but I fought off the temptation to offer a reassuring cliché and instead I just watched him. I watched him cry. I watched him agonize over past events in his life, trying to figure out why things had unfolded the way they did. I watched him mourn. I watched him searching for answers, searching for better questions, longing for reprieve. This man is a mentor of sorts to me. I care for him very deeply, and thus it was hard to sit there and do nothing; at least that’s what it felt like at the time. However, as the conversation progressed it dawned on me that simply allowing for or creating the space for him to think aloud, to ask and say these things with another human being, was a kind of reprieve. The gloom I initially encountered lifted the more we spoke (or more accurately, the more he talked and I listened). When I was leaving he walked me to his office door, shook my hand and put his arm around me and said, “I may be broken, but I’m not defeated. I just wish God would kiss the pain away.” The manner in which he said this suggested that he wasn’t so much stating a fact, as much as he was saying something that was just starting to realize for himself. His smile suggested something was happening, or changing; something as simple as acknowledging to himself that he indeed was not defeated. It was an important moment. There is something to the claim that our true character is formed in the face of adversity or heartbreak. Adversity comes to us early. As babes we emerge from our mother’s womb into a cold, bright, unknown world. Later we are left to sleep alone in our crib (and honestly I’m not sure for whom that experience is more traumatic - the screaming child who feels abandoned and afraid, or the parent who, in listening to the screams, feels as if they have abandoned their child). Then the doll breaks its head, and so on. Before you know it you’re in seventh grade at the middle school dance, and let’s face it - that’s just never a good scenario. Then we don’t get into our first choice college; the love of our life marries someone else; we get cancer; someone we love dies. Heartbreak builds character. And we shouldn’t make light of heartaches, for every ache feels fatal regardless of whether it is or not. A broken toy hurts a child just as much as a broken marriage hurts an adult. A broken heart at any age means that the center of life is shattered beyond repair, or at least that’s how it feels at the time. But experience teaches us that we are far more resilient than we might initially believe. Children teach us this especially well, and the paradox of their small, frail bodies contrasted with their amazing resiliency and strength is not lost on any parent. In fact, adversity forms character, in part, because we learn from a very young age that wrecked lives can be restored, that grace is present in the midst of pain, but that’s a bitter education that takes years to comprehend and accept. The process of comprehension and acceptance often leads to another painful truth. We are who we are not because of what life has thrown our way; rather, we are who we are by the various decisions we made: this job, that relationship, this conversation, that choice, etc. If we had made opposite decisions, or even just different decisions, we would have ended up a different person. We are who are because of what we’ve chosen, and often our choices have led to heartbreak. But heartbreak has a potentially positive effect. By the grace of God we can accept heartbreak as a window into our soul, and as the opportunity to expand our life possibilities - the chance to engage different gifts and different challenges in a different manner than before. [1] “Mstislav Rostropovich was one of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century. His dissident views caused him to be stripped of his citizenship and many of his musical honors in the old Soviet Union. But looking back at age 75, the Maestro said, ‘Comfort and celebrity are not necessarily good for an artist… If I had not endured those terrible years, I would have been maybe a good cellist, but not the one I became. Difficult times are necessary for a good performance — the big spill of emotion, from tragedy to enormous joy.’” [2] “The fact that Rostropovich became a great musician through what he suffered is no justification for the repression he endured. But it is true that great art, literature, music, and great lives generally emerge out of some kind of suffering. In the American musical tradition, jazz and blues would not be what they are without the hard times in which they were born. When Aretha Franklin sang ‘My Country ‘tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty’ at the Inauguration, you could feel behind the words the suffering of generations of Americans who longed for the day when “liberty and justice for all” would include them.” [3] This is the mindset necessary to understand well the texts we’ve read today. Isaiah’s soaring words and beautiful poetry can disguise the fact that they were borne in a moment of crisis and adversity. When he asks his people: “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” the truth is they didn’t know and they hadn’t heard (at least not in a way that mattered for their present circumstances). Israel had been in exile as a people for generations. They endured great suffering and adversity, struggled to keep their identity, their culture, their faith. Many had died and been buried in a foreign, hostile land never again to see and smell and taste the goodness of home. Heartbreak had become a way of life. In addition to those that died, still many others refused to return when the opportunity arrived. It’s conceivable that the mere journey across the deserts of the Middle East was enough to cause some to stay put in a familiar, yet foreign context. Perhaps others knew the monumental task of rebuilding a nation and an identity that awaited them. Or maybe some stayed simply because they refused to return to a land promised them by a God who they believed had abandoned them. Refusal of return became an indictment against God for allowing all that had transpired. These were difficult, challenging, heartbreaking times. It is into this context that Isaiah speaks the words, “He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah words are a call to the adventurous of spirit, those brave enough to see their reality from a different perspective. His words were encouragement to those who by the grace of God accepted heartbreak as a window into their soul, and as the opportunity to expand life possibilities - the chance to engage different gifts and different challenges differently than they had in the past. Isaiah threw down the gauntlet and challenged his people to acknowledge their brokenness but to reject their defeat. God would strengthen them, accompany them, and renew them so that something great would emerge from their suffering and heartbreak. Jesus stood in the prophetic tradition of Isaiah. The sick and all haunted by demons of every sort (we all have a few in our closets or within that we can’t seem to shed) were brought to him. Mark tells us that he refused to let the demons speak. He silenced them. Now, if we can set aside our images of scary spirits and the grim reaper and make room instead for a more expansive understanding of demons, we might appreciate the power of this confrontation. Mark is telling us that Jesus confronted all that challenged and derailed God’s intention and desires for God’s people, and he silenced them. In his presence they lost power - and people were liberated. No longer defeated and confined, they were free, at last, for something great to emerge from a once haunted, heartbroken life. Jesus and Isaiah are both enacting and declaring the same exact work of God in the world. Separated by centuries, they reveal to us God’s way and intention in the world - to confront and silence all that constrains and limits God’s people from being free to be God’s people. God would not let them, nor will God allow us to be defeated. Instead God intends for us to soar with wings as eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and to toil, broken for sure, but not defeated, not faint, not weary. Where are you broken? Where are you feeling defeated or faint or weary or afraid? Friends, today an invitation is being extended - an invitation to let Jesus heal you. Today you are invited to let Jesus silence your demons, heal your wounded-ness, and give you back a life that is broken and yet whole. That is the promise, and although it will look different for each one of us, the promise is the same. Will you trust that? Will you be strong and vulnerable enough to open yourself to the possibility of being made whole? I can’t talk you into it. I’m not even sure exactly what it looks like. But I do know this, healing and wholeness is for the brave of heart, for those willing to be weak so that they might be strong; for those willing to name and see their demons so that they might be silenced once and for all. God may not kiss the pain away, but God will you give you the strength to bear it, in part, because you will not bear it alone. That’s what this church family is for - to bear one another’s burdens and to seek God’s way in the world together. And together we shall soar like the eagle into a future overflowing with promise. [1] Previous three paragraphs influenced by James Smith, Celebration Publications, Feb. 8, 2009, p. 4.
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