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 II Corinthians 12:7-10
On any given Sunday, if there were a camera mounted behind me as I stand in the pulpit, situated to photograph everybody, most of the faces in the sanctuary would show some degree of happiness. But if the camera had some magical ability to get behind the faces, to get behind the façade, it would show that everybody - no exception - hides a degree of brokenness.
People are routinely broken by life's misfortunes. This magical camera would show that some people have very obvious and ugly open wounds left over from childhood. In some one would see the results of abuses, where older people with more power, sometimes people we trusted, took advantage of us and deeply injured our psyches and our souls.
The camera would show disappointment and sadness. It would show the results of those times when life was just plain hard. It would show illnesses that completely changed the direction of life. It would show frustration, failure, the results and hurts of rejection and it would show the sins that we have committed that have made life more difficult, more complex and more harsh.
This magical camera would show brokenness in every one of us. Sometimes it's hard for us to talk about that brokenness, whether it is buried deep within us or out in the open. Sometimes we're embarrassed, or it just hurts too much to think or talk about it, so we put it aside. But it is good to get it out in the open.
Now you might be thinking this is turning out to be a depressing sermon. Well, it isn't.
Because in addition to brokenness, there's something else that camera would record -- the greatness of the human being, the resourcefulness, the spirit and the spunk that is in every single one of us.
A songwriter once wrote the words:
When your chin is on the ground, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
Everybody has done it time and time and time again. It's a wondrous phenomenon.
My role model and inspiration for overcoming, for heart, for spirit and for inner resolve, is St. Paul. He had an extraordinary life. He was brilliant, had this incredible energy, but was always in some kind of trouble. Life was whacking him around, beating him down and trying to break him up. And what did Paul do about it? In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, he said,
We do not lose heart. We may be afflicted, but we're not crushed. We may be perplexed, but we're not driven to despair. We may be persecuted, but we are not forsaken. We may be knocked down, but we are not destroyed.
These are some wise words to live by.
When I started this sermon with an imaginary camera, I did it lightly, but it's not a light thing. It would be wonderful if this church could be photographed with all the happy faces, showing all the people who had been wounded but who, deep down inside, have this overcoming spirit - the pluck, the intestinal fortitude, the spunk, the heart, the soul, and the energy to keep on going - to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again. That is the greatness of the human being. That is the greatness of any Christian community. That is the greatness of any larger community. That is the greatness of a country.
You know, New York City is a city with tremendous spirit. After 9-11, we've seen the recovery, the ability to pick ourselves up, the faith, the overcoming, the building again of this town, not only physically but also emotionally and spiritually. There is great resolve in this community, and we're blessed by it.
What is the secret of recovering from devastation? What can we as individuals do, when we are broken, so that we are not beaten? The wisest thing to do and the first thing to do is to seek divine help. Seek out the answers from the highest point of view. Go to God to find out what God is saying to us in any given situation. This is what St. Paul did.
As we all know, Paul had a handicap. There was something in his life that prohibited him from going full speed. Some people say it might have been epilepsy that hindered him from going full out. It was certainly more than a sore thumb; it was a serious, life-long affliction.
Paul did what any person would do in a situation where there is a hindrance, an illness. He prayed and prayed for healing. His reasoning may have gone something like this: "Look, God, I am doing one heck of a job for You. My whole life is dedicated to You. If You take away this thorn in my flesh, if You take away this illness, this thing which is holding me back at unexpected times, then I could do so much more for You." That's the way Paul went at it. But he didn't get healed.
He could have become bitter. He could have turned against God. He could have thought, "I am crazy to give my life to God, when God could heal me and doesn't." Instead, he did an extraordinary thing. He asked God, "What do You want me to learn from this? What message are You sending me through this experience? How do You want to use my illness?"
The answers he got were incredible. God said to him, "Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. My perfect strength is shown to you in and through your weakness."
So Paul shifted the gears of his attitude toward life and toward God. He boasted of his weakness and suffering. He had begun to understand that his suffering would serve Jesus Christ. God would find a way to use his suffering for good.
The American playwright Thornton Wilder wrote a magnificent short play, The Angel That Troubled the Waters. Do you know the story? It's poignant and powerful. It involves the pool at Bethesda, the famous pool in Jerusalem where the people believed that a movement of the surface of the water was caused by an angel. The pool was surrounded by the ill and disabled who, as soon as they saw the waters being stirred, would quickly enter the pool, as they believed that the first person to enter the moving water would be healed.
In Wilder's play, there was a physician who would go to the pool with some regularity, wishing to be healed of his afflictions of melancholy and remorse. One day as he sat at the edge of the pool waiting and the waters began to stir, the angel appeared and stopped him from getting in. "Healing is not for you," the angel told him.
The physician was very upset. Why could he not receive this precious gift?
The angel responded, "Your melancholy and remorse, and the timbre in your voice when you speak to the broken and wretched, speak volumes and have a healing effect on them. Healing is not for you."
Still, the physician was troubled. But then a man who had been healed and was rejoicing came over, and said, "Would you come home with me just for one hour? My son is thinking dark thoughts. I can't communicate with him. You are the only person who has ever been able to lift his spirits. And since her child died, my daughter sits in the shadow. She won't listen to us, but she does listen to you. Please come home with me."
The angel, standing nearby listening, said, "In love's service only the wounded soldier can serve. All the angels themselves do not have the power to heal as you do."
A wonderful modern-day example of the healing power of the wounded is Alcoholics Anonymous. You would think people with the problem of addiction would require a staff of trained professionals - doctors and psychiatrists - to help them get better, to beat their addictions. But AA doesn't have that superstructure. AA is much simpler. There, it is the wounded that heal. The power in AA is not the professional. The power in AA is in the wounded person. The wounded person understands what others cannot, and the wounded person is the one who can be there, make a difference, and help change another life.
And so, as you consider the brokenness in your life, rather than curse it and be bitter about it, ask God the question, "What message is there in this brokenness for me? Is there some way You want to use my wounded-ness to be a healing agent for somebody else?"
The late Dutch priest Henri Nouwen was a prolific writer and a great intellect. Throughout his career he taught at Yale and Harvard, but there was something about those academic communities that made him uncomfortable, although his students loved him. There was a competition and arrogance that went on in those university communities that Nouwen did not like. He wanted to be in a place where he could be closer to God, and he elected to live out the rest of his days in a community for handicapped people in Canada called L'Arche.
In one of his books he tells a story about something that happened after dinner one night at L'Arche. A group of residents went to the chapel to pray for Rose, another resident who had become quite ill. Rose was a 22 year-old woman who looked like a fourteen year-old girl, very thin and fragile, unable to talk or walk. Yet she had a wonderful spirit that caused everybody in that community to love her.
So they stood around a single candle and a rose, and they started to pray. Nouwen listened as these handicapped people prayed for their dear friend Rose, and was struck by the simplicity, the sincerity, the directness, the vulnerability and the beauty of these prayers. And he said that he, a man of faith and a man who believed in prayer, stood on the outskirts feeling overwhelmed as he experienced these people praying.
"When handicapped people pray for handicapped people," he said, "God is very near." In love's service, only the wounded soldier can serve.
Gail Kitselman is a member of our staff here at Marble - she's Director of Volunteer Activities. Nine years ago she faced a very dangerous cancer. She has been struggling through the brokenness, anxiety and apprehension from that cancer through these many years, and is grateful for every day she is continuing to live. We have a custom in our staff meetings that each week a different member of the staff will lead us in prayer. A couple of weeks ago it was Gail's turn. "It was nine years ago today," she said, "that I had my surgery, and I'm cancer-free for these nine years."
Then she read to us something that has been on her mantel for all these years that she reads every day, by the French writer Paul Claudel.
Jesus did not come to explain away suffering, or to remove it. He came to fill it with His presence.
Jesus is a wounded healer, and his power, his relevance, his life-changing presence, is there in all of its fullness because He was wounded. God has taken his wounded-ness and blessed the world with his presence. In love's service only the wounded soldier can heal.
Bless you and let us pray.
Lord, for the calling of life, for the pain that we have, for the brokenness we all experience and share, we can say 'thank you', because we know that You take the brokenness and the pain and You do good things with it, and You use it for Your glory. You use our weaknesses to help others be strong. God bless us and use us and lift us up. AMEN |
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