Luke 24:1-12
Our theme during Lent this year was Broken Blessings. On the first week I asked everyone to write on a slip of colored paper something that had been a broken blessing in their lives—some area of brokenness or woundedness that had ultimately become something beautiful. The answers were heartbreaking and heartwarming: stories of fractured marriages that were healed, and broken marriages that made room for another love; stories of unplanned pregnancies that started a beautiful family; and stories of losing babies, wounds that never completely heal, but somehow expand the heart. And then there was one answer that has stayed with me: “No blessings yet. Ask again in five years.”
The next week I asked people to write when they broke down—when they hit rock bottom, admitted they couldn’t do it alone; or to write what kept them from reaching out to others who had broken down. I received more stories of pain and mercy: stories of war and battles with addiction, stories of lost jobs and lost parents, stories of thinking all was lost—only to find out it wasn’t.
It continued this way throughout Lent. Each week we wrote down something different—a time when we were hurt, a blessing, a burden, or something we have to give to the world. Each week I read the answers prayerfully, and then I put all the slips from that week in an envelope. And then Deb Dagnan began her work. Deb took all of these colored slips of paper, and with some help from Betsy and Skyler Keiter, made these windows that tell the story of each scripture lesson that week.
The fruit tells the story of the commandment to give to God the first fruit of the harvest in the Promised Land—the first harvest after the brokenness of slavery. Those fruit are made up of the broken blessings we shared. The coat represents the coat that the father gave to his prodigal son to welcome him home. It is made from those rock bottom experiences. The road and the heart tell the story of the Good Samaritan, and times we broke through barriers to give or receive help. The sun reminds us of the woman who had been bent over with pain, that Jesus healed, allowing her to stand up straight and see the sun again. It is formed out of those things that weigh us down. And the pitcher being poured out, is the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with her precious perfume, and it is made out of the gifts we have to offer the world.
A few of you folded your paper or rolled it into a little ball, wanting to protect the privacy of your story—so we left them that way to symbolize all the stories we do not share. Some of you wrote on regular paper, and I transferred them to colored strips so that nobody would be left out. I wanted the light to shine through our brokenness. I wanted to remind you—and me—that our failures are not fatal, that ugliness can be transformed, and that the broken places are where the light shines through.
I supposed it’s odd to still be talking about brokenness on Easter Sunday. That’s a Lent theme, after all. Isn’t Easter supposed to be all praise and glory, all lilies and Hallelujahs? Sure, if you are living an Easter Sunday kind of life at the moment. But many aren’t. Many of us come with burdens, with aches and pains of body or spirit, carrying yesterday’s guilt and tomorrow’s fears. At best, life is a mixed bag.
I read a story recently about such a mixed bag. A woman tells about her trip to an art museum and to its gift shop afterwards. She writes:
“I was standing in line at the cash register with a box of Van Gogh note cards in my hand when I saw a clear glass bowl full of smooth silver pebbles on the counter. Each was about as big as my thumb, with one word etched into its surface. Even without touching them, I could see one that said ‘hope’ and another that said ‘love.’ I had a recently widowed friend who could use some pebbles like that, so I sank my hand in the bowl to see what else I might fish up. ‘Tears,’ said the next pebble. ‘Loss,’ said the next. Well, I thought, my friend already has enough of those, so I put them back and kept fishing. I found a couple of gratitudes, along with a few more hopes and loves, but only by looking hard. Over and over, I brought up whole handfuls of tears and loss, which outnumbered the other pebbles by at least 20 to one. Everyone had enough of those, apparently, or wanted nothing to do with them. Why pay good money for something that life pelts you with for free? I discovered one ‘forgiveness’ in the bottom of the bowl, which told me what the bestseller had been. Pushing all the other pebbles aside, I plucked it up and laid it on the counter with hope, love and gratitude.
“Then I looked back at all the tears and loss left in the bowl and thought maybe that was part of the problem—that no one wanted to own them—so I chose one of each and added them to my collection. I felt almost cruel giving them to my friend, but her sad mouth softened when she saw them. She may not have wanted them, but she knew they were hers, and seeing them in her hand with all the others told her story better than the edited version I first had in mind. ‘Tears’ belonged next to ‘love,’ and ‘hope’ took on more luster when nestled against ‘loss.’ ‘Gratitude’ was no longer a platitude and ‘forgiveness’ had something major to forgive. Holding all of the pebbles together in one hand turned out to be exactly what she needed.”[1]
That’s what we have to do—even on Easter Sunday. We hold all of the pebbles together in one hand. We honor our brokenness and the light that shines through it.
Still, it may seem strange. After all, those of us in the church have come to expect Easter to be big. We have big attendance—or we want it!—and big choir anthems and big Hallelujahs. And we get them, and that’s all good. Theologically, Easter is the biggest day of the church year. But Easter didn’t start out to be big—not for the followers of Jesus. Easter started out pretty small.
Listen again to the first reactions to the news of the resurrection. The women saw angels and were terrified. After the angels told them that he had risen, just as he said he would, there was not a single “Hallelujah!” We don’t know what they thought—it wasn’t recorded. The story just says the women went and told the other disciples. And when the men heard the news, there was not a single “Christ is risen!” They didn’t believe the women’s “idle tale.” Peter did at least get up and run to the tomb, to see for himself. The scripture tells us what he did next: “And then he went home.” Sure, it says he was amazed at what happened. But he just went home. Rather anti-climactic, don’t you think?
It must have taken time to understand, to come to grips with resurrection. They had to wrestle with it, argue it, wait for more proof. But I think their muted response was more because the suffering they had witnessed on Friday still loomed too large to make room for joy. In other words, they had a small Easter because they’d had a huge Good Friday.
We’ve all had them—those days when suffering is big, when pain is ever-present, when loss threatens our peace, or when life simply gets so annoyingly life-y. We need resurrection. We need hope. But “Sometimes Good Friday is so big that Easter has to start small. It may take a while for Easter to sink deep, deep into the fertile, broken up soil of our hearts. It may take a while to see the resurrection promise begin to grow, and bud, and bloom. It may take a while for us, as it did for Jesus’ first disciples, to dry our tears and open our eyes to the truth [about] this resurrection promise…. The resurrection promise is not about things being the way we want them to be. That would make for a very small Easter indeed. The resurrection promise is about the deep reality of holy life, even in the midst of violence, sickness, and death. The resurrection promise is about God’s reckless love for us, and our ability, by God’s grace, to live out that reckless love toward other people.”[2]
These windows tell the stories of the Bible, but they also tell our stories. The same is true of the Easter story. The Easter story is the story of Christ’s resurrection, whatever you take that to mean. But it is also the story of resurrection for us, of hope reborn, of the possible made out of the impossible. It doesn’t happen all at once. For us, the time in the tomb of despair can be way more than three days. When we’re in the midst of it, we can’t see the light. Sometimes we say, “No blessings yet. Ask again in five years.” I like that answer. Actually, I love that answer—First because it is honest, and second because it holds out the possibility of hope. There are no blessings yet from this brokenness. But ask again. Ask again.
There was one other answer on those slips of paper that haunted me. I believe it was in response to the question, “What gift do you have that you can pour out on others?” The answer was this: “I am irrelevant—of no practical use to the world.” And that’s when I deeply regretted that this project was anonymous. I wanted to go to this person and hold their hand. I want to go to you and to hold your hand and to tell you it isn’t true—that you are not irrelevant, but so very relevant. You are a child of God. A child of hope. A child of resurrection.
You see, the response of the disciples may have been anti-climactic. They may not have shouted “Hallelujah” or “Christ is Risen.” But they were witnesses. And that’s our job, too. Not witnesses like knocking on people’s doors asking if they’ve found Jesus. But eye witnesses—people who have seen an event and can testify to what happened. “Resurrection is not a third person confession but a first person testimony.”[3]
You are not irrelevant. You can be an eye witness to resurrection. You can be an eye witness to the birth of hope. You can be an eye witness to love that refuses to die. You even can be an eye witness to the pain of another, because sometimes being seen is just what we need to make room for resurrection. You can be an eye witness to the light that shines in broken places.
In our broken world, that is about as relevant as you can get.
Amen.
[1] Barbara Brown Taylor. “Spectacular Failures.” The Christian Century, February 22, 2005.
[2] “Small Easter” www.spaciousfaith.com
[3] Lewis, Karoline. “True Resurrection.” www.workingpreacher.org.