Texts: Isaiah
63:7-9; Matthew 2:13-23
Play
some of “Pick Up the Pieces,” The Average White Band (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aGBXrJ6e34)
“Pick
Up the Pieces” – probably not a bad post-Christmas song. We pick up the house, discard wrapping paper
and packaging. We do some post-guest
cleaning. If we have young children, we
are probably putting together something that may have broken already.
The
phrase, “pick up the pieces” implies brokenness, and that reminds me of a
different song: Bob Dylan, “Everything is Broken” (http://videos.sapo.pt/EZNZizOUtzpQctOD4U1U)
Now
that’s not a very cheery thought. It
seems counter-intuitive for this holiday season when we praise the generosity
and good spirit of the human community.
But then the story from Matthew’s gospel, coming on the heels of his
telling of the birth of Jesus, isn’t very cheery either. It is much more an “everything is broken”
story.
Herod,
infuriated that the wise men did not report back to him, goes on a killing
spree – a spree worthy of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and most recently, Kim Jong Un
in North Korea. Threatened by a child
who others might consider a king, Herod “killed all the children in and around
Bethlehem who were two years old or under.”
The
sad reality is that this story from Matthew seems so real, because history has
seen it repeated again and again. Destructive conflicts are readily
apparent. Petty grievances find their
way into state policies. Everything is
broken. I have already mentioned the
recent executions in North Korea. South
Sudan is in the headlines. The world’s
newest nation, created in 2011 through a peace deal that ended Africa’s
longest-running civil war, South Sudan has been plunged into violent, murderous
conflict. Rivalries between the Dinka
and Neur tribes has escalated, and there has been violence between militias and
government troops. One sad story coming
out of the recent funeral for Nelson Mandela was the initial exclusion of
Archbishop Desmond Tutu from the state funeral for Mandela in his hometown
village. Tutu has become a vocal critic
of the ANC government, who was in charge of the guest list for the state
funeral. After poor publicity, Tutu was
invited to attend and did.
But
the brokenness of the world is not just out there. It is also found in our lives. In his wonderfully written new book, Unapologetic,
which has the wonderful subtitle: “why, despite everything, Christianity can
still make surprising emotional sense,” Francis Spufford writes about the human
heart. Examining the human condition,
Spufford says he finds a “human propensity to [mess] things up” – though he
uses a more colorful word. What we’re talking about here is not just
our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as
agents of entropy. It’s our active
inclination to break stuff, “stuff” here includes moods, promises,
relationships we care about, and our own well-being and other people’s, as well
as material objects….(27) let yourself take seriously the implication
that we actually want the destructive things we do, that they are not just an
accident that keeps happening to poor little us, but part of our nature; that
we are truly cruel as well as truly tender, truly loving and at the same time
truly like to take a quick nasty little pleasure in wasting or breaking love,
scorching it knowingly up as the fuel for some hotter or more exciting feeling (29-30).
Couldn’t
Matthew have just skipped this story?
Couldn’t we just ignore the brokenness that permeates our world, and
also finds its way into our lives?
There
is brokenness.
There
is God.
We
cannot just read the story in Matthew in isolation from the larger story of God
in the Bible. Isaiah tells us something
important about the larger story. I will recount the gracious deeds of the
Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all the Lord has done for
us… according to the abundance of his steadfast love…. It was no messenger or angel but his presence
that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them.
If
the song about the world and about our lives is sometimes “Everything is
Broken,” the song of God is a song about “Pick Up the Pieces.” That’s what God does – heals, frees, loves,
offers new beginnings. The biblical word
“saves” has the same roots as the word for healing and wholeness. God saves, that is, God heals. God makes what is broken whole.
Gregory
Boyle is a Catholic priest in Los Angeles who works with gang members. He is the founder and executive director of
Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program. He writes about his ministry and experiences
in Tattoos on the Heart. There he
tells the story of baptizing George.
George, 17, and his older brother Cisco, 19, are both gang members. George has been taken out of his typical
environment and placed in a camp. This
is where Father Boyle as come to know him, and he has seen changes in George,
from tough street kid “into a thoughtful, measured man, aware of his gifts and
talents previously obscured by the unreasonable demands of his gang life.” George has completed his GED and wants to be
baptized as a celebration of that and of his new sense of who he is.
The
night before George’s scheduled baptism, his brother Cisco is walking home before
midnight. A half block from his
apartment, rival gang members sneak up and open fire on Cisco, killing him
instantly. Father Boyle consider
cancelling the next day’s mass at the camp, but George’s baptism is scheduled.
When I arrive before Mass, with all the
empty chairs in place in the mess hall, there is George standing by himself,
holding his newly acquired GED certificate.
He heads toward me, waving his GED and beaming. We hug each other. He is in a borrowed, ironed, crisp white
shirt and thin black tie.
At the beginning of Mass, with the
mess hall now packed, I ask him, “What’s your name?” “George Martinez,” he says, with an overflow
of confidence. “And George, what do you
ask of God’s church?” ”Baptism,” he says
with a steady, barely contained smile.
It’s the most difficult baptism of
my life. For as I pour water over
George’s head: “Father… Son… Spirit,” I know I will walk George outside alone
after and tell him what happened. As I
do, and I put my arm around him, I whisper gently as we walk out onto the
baseball field, “George, your brother Cisco was killed last night.”
I can feel all the air leave his
body as he heaves a sigh that finds itself a sob in an instant. We land on a bench. His face seeks refuge in his open palms, and
he sobs quietly. Most notable is what
isn’t present in his rocking and gentle wailing. I’ve been in this place before many
times. There is always flailing and rage
and promises to avenge things. There is
none of this in George. It is as if the
commitment he has just made in water, oil, and flame has taken hold and his
grief is pure and true and more resembles the heartbreak of God. George seems to offer proof of the efficacy
of this thing we call sacrament, and he manages to hold all the complexity of this
great sadness, right here, on this bench, in his tender weeping. I had previously asked him in the baptismal
rite, after outlining the contours of faith and the commitment “to live as
through this truth was true.” “Do you
understand what you are doing?” … “Yes, I do.”
And, yes, he does. In the
monastic tradition, the highest form of sanctity is to live in hell and not
lose hope. George clings to his hope and
his faith and his GED certificate and chooses to march, resilient, into his
future. (85-86)
This
is a story about brokenness, and about the healing and hopeful work of God, a
God who is about picking up the pieces.
And
God invites us to work with God in God’s healing task. One of my favorite post-Christmas reflections
is offered by Howard Thurman, and you will see this again in my newsletter
article.
When the song of the
angels is stilled,
When the star in the
sky is gone,
When the kings and
princes are home,
When the shepherds are
back with their flock,
The work of Christmas
begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the
prisoner,
To rebuild the
nations,
To bring peace among
people,
To make music in the
heart. Howard Thurman
There
is brokenness. There is God. There is healing. There is work to be done. Amen.
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