Sermons
Who's Got The Pieces?
WHO’S GOT THE PIECES?
Powerpoint presentation: /media/uploads/public/WHO%E2%80%99S%20GOT%20THE%20PIECES.pptx
We have all experienced in our lives sayings that have been passed from one generation to the next. For the most part, we just take those sayings as, “Well they must be true grandma told mom and mom told me.” We often refer to them as, “old wives tales.” We could just as easily call them old husband’s tails, or family lore.
If something is repeated enough, people just take for granted that it must be true.
Here are just a few examples;
- “You need to put some hydrogen peroxide on that!” – How many of us have been told this at one time or another? As it turns out those healing bubbles are actually attacking your body. Hydrogen peroxide can cause cellular damage and actually extend the healing process.
- “Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis.” – A lot of us bought into that one, didn’t we? A lot more studies than we at first realize have been done on this. A doctor in California named Donald Unger, who for sixty years experimented on himself. He cracked his knuckles on his left hand twice a day for sixty years. That works out to about 438,000 times. On his right hand he didn’t crack his knuckles. And at the end of sixty years he’s like, “ Yeah, there’s no difference!” The primary negative impact on cracking your knuckles is the annoyance to those nearby.
- Here is a good one – “Don’t swallow your gum because it takes (7) years to digest.”
I remember as a kid the fear I had that gum was piling up in my system. It was hard not to swallow it. I would chew it till the flavor was gone and if I became distracted as kids do I would gulp it down, then I’d be like oh no another one! There has been research done on this as well. Colonoscopy research has been done to find out how long it takes for gum to exit the body. And it turns out I will be just fine!
- Here is (1) more; “if someone tosses a penny off the empire state building and it hit a walker on the street below, it would kill them.” This defies the laws of physics. Due to the weight of a penny and it’s resistance to the surrounding air, the stored kinetic energy would only be enough to “hurt” “ouch” not kill. It’s not going to pick up the velocity of a meteor!
- Our point is there are certain things we’ve just accepted. There are certain things we just go along with, and we kind of live our lives according to these things. We may even pass them onto our children, and we find these things are reinforced by the people around us. As we can see we are all told some of the same things, so it must be true. And we spend our lives pouring hydrogen peroxide on our wounds and abstaining from the fun of knuckle cracking for no real reason.
That was a little milk; now let’s get into the meat!
What if we’ve just accepted some things that have much more significant implications?
What if we have just gone along with some things? We’ve just believed some things because we’ve been told them, and it’s been reinforced by the culture around us, that have much more dire ramifications?
I remember a teen class I had years ago where I was asked, “Why do people believe so many different things and worship so differently? Why are there so many different denominations of Christians?
Could it be that too many of us just accept and go along with what we are told and not check things out for ourselves?
If we study the ministry of Jesus, here is what we will find: He spent a lot of His time teaching as a Rabbi. He spent a significant amount of His time “debunking” the myths that the people had been taught about God and about faith.
A lot of what He did was to say, “You’ve heard it said, but I am going to tell you something different. I know you’ve been taught to look at it this way, I’m going to give you a new way of looking at it.”
He came confronting some false beliefs about faith, about religion, about God that many people had just accepted.
Perk your ears up! This is important!
Many of the spiritual leaders of Jesus’ day made the focus the outside! To them, that’s what it meant to follow God.
It was like this; get your act together by doing the following, keep up appearances, and you follow all the right rules, and you keep the rituals. Then Jesus comes along, and He says, “Look, I know you’ve been taught that it’s what’s on the outside. That’s not what it’s about. It’s what’s on the “inside”, and then what’s on the inside comes out. It’s an inside-out way of following God!”
However, many of us look at faith like the Jews of old. So we have taught ourselves to keep track of how we are doing on the outside.
We have learned how to keep up appearances, to make everybody know we have a smile on our faces and that everything is good and we don’t have any problems…..And God says, “Look, people may look at the outside, but I look at the heart!”
Back in Jesus’ day that was hard for the people to accept. He was all about change. He truly turned the world upside down and we could say “inside out!”
This was even an issue in the temple back then. Some felt unwelcome or that they just were not good enough to take part in worship. They even made the way people dressed an issue of worship. The leadership would get offended if someone was too expressive in their worship. Sound familiar? I remember back when Deb and I first became Christians, there were times I got scornful looks for not wearing a tie. I was even told by an elder not to wear sneakers to worship again. And if someone would shout, “Amen!” during a sermon or raised their hands during prayer, they would get funny looks.
Back in Jesus’ time people felt like in order to worship they had to have it all together, that they couldn’t have any problems, and that their families weren’t struggling, nothing hidden in the closet. The result was that
the house of God had become a place where it wasn’t safe to talk about struggles, or to deal with one’s hurts or especially failures. May we never get like that!
The people back then were made to believe some things that weren’t true about Jesus. And Jesus addresses some commonly held untruths. That instead of looking like you have it all together, He wants authentic worship. Instead of carefully observing all these religious rituals, He wants a close relationship. Instead of acting more righteous than you really are, what He wants is BROKENESS.
Yes, that’s right, brokenness. A word not used much today. We live in a culture that’s been termed, “a throwaway culture.”
Just look at what we toss out from week to week. Each successive generation is getting farther away from the skills of fixing things. I had an uncle that was a TV repairman. He taught my brothers and I how to fix most issues with TVs. Look in the yellow pages, how many “fix it shops can you find? How many TV repairmen or shoe shops are there? Not many.
When things break we throw them away. We don’t value repairing and fixing, making things like new again. We live in a throwaway culture.
If you visit the empire state building in NYC and go to the observation deck you will notice a few scopes that you can look through to get a closer look around the city.
Jesus gives us this kind of different lens to look at broken things. Jesus says in effect, “Come here, come here, I want you to look at the world through my eyes. Through My scope. Look at this person with the lens I’m looking at them through.”
Unlike us, when Jesus sees broken, He sees beautiful. He sees something of value.
When God sees broken He sees beautiful. We are going to look at an example in Luke 7. It is this story that brought about today’s sermon.
I find scripture so amazing. We can read through it several times and each time something seems to jump off the pages at us.
A new understanding that we missed in the past. That’s what makes God’s word so exciting!
We want to just share this story this morning rather than read it. I encourage all of us to read it when we get home. Consider today’s lesson as you do and see what you discover.
In this story Jesus has been invited over to the house of Simon, who is a Pharisee, a religious leader. As a religious leader it was Simon’s duty to invite the visiting rabbi, Jesus, over to his house to eat. Jesus arrives at Simon’s house and Simon’s heart is not in it.
He does not really want Jesus there. When Jesus walks in, Simon doesn’t offer Jesus a greeting. Today would be a hand shake but back then it would be a kiss on the cheek. There was none.
When the time to eat comes around Simon doesn’t have the feet of Jesus washed. Which was the most common thing to do for a guest in one’s house. Or at least give water so the guest could wash their own feet, but Simon doesn’t even do that!
If a guest was a special guest of honor olive oil would be brought out to anoint the head with that oil.
Simon did none of these things. Jesus comes in sets down and Simon doesn’t honor Him
We read in verse 37 that this woman comes in and things start to get a little awkward, we read that she is a “sinner.”
This term sinner as used here probably refers to the woman being a prostitute and that she is known as that in the community.
We can be sure that those gathered at this meal, {other than the Lord}, were uncomfortable with her walking in.
For her to walk in knowing that Jesus was there took a lot on her part. She must of heard something Jesus spoke about for her to take such a chance. She must of believed that Jesus could heal her brokenness and be able to make her whole.
That God could still do something wonderful with the pieces.
Just think, she would never have been invited to this or any gathering, but she walks in. This was not a safe place for her. But she felt compelled to chance whatever may happen. She had to see Jesus. She was desperate.
To those gathered for this meal she was broken beyond repair. A Pharisee would see someone who was a throwaway, but she hoped and she trusted that that’s not how Jesus would see her!
What she does next, those gathered for this meal at Simon’s house must have felt embarrassed; it was so inappropriate. It’s unacceptable.
Jesus is reclining at the table and this woman approaches and she stands at the feet of our Lord. All eyes are no doubt on her. She probable feels the stares of condemnation. Not Jesus! She looks at Jesus and He knows what’s in her heart. He feels her hurt, her utter despair, her brokenness, her desperation.
She knows there is hope in what Jesus has been saying and doing. It’s like this is her last chance for help.
She breaks down and begins to cry. Not simply sobbing but all out release of her inner self. So much so that her tears begin to flow. They pour from deep in her soul. She is so heartbroken that she falls to the ground and she begins to kiss the Feet of Jesus. Can you picture this? She had to feel that she was utterly worthless, that she was no better than the dirt on the Lord’s feet! She notices that His feet haven’t been washed as costmary. It has been said that, “oftentimes it’s only when tears fill our eyes that our eyes can finally see some things clearly.”
She doesn’t have a towel and she can’t ask for one, so she lets down her hair. We may overlook this but back them a woman would only let down her hair in the privacy of her own home. She doesn’t care, her tears are wetting the feet of Jesus and she wipes them with her hair all the while the tears continue flowing. Her heart is pouring out through those tears.
She then takes a small bottle of perfume from around her neck and pours all of it on Jesus’ feet. She just pours all of it out, her whole life she pours out at the feet of Jesus. She was broken, she felt no way out, hoping that Jesus could help her to escape a life of despair. She was now putting her life in the hands of our Lord.
By Jesus allowing this to happen He was saying to her and those gathered that this was a beautiful act. He sees her brokenness as beautiful!
In this story we see what Jesus does. He flips conventional wisdom on its ear. He rebukes Simon who was following all the rules and lifts up this sinner, this broken woman that most would just cast off as a throwaway!
This story in Luke ends with Jesus saying in verse 48, “Your sins are forgiven!” And then in verse 50 He says, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” Not go in pieces but go in peace. And she is made whole!
Let me ask; who would you rather be in this story? Simon who seemed to have it all together or would you rather be this woman who is a broken mess but experienced the love and the grace of Jesus in such a deep way.
Jesus said, “I am the door.” We should see that door as the door marked, “broken.”
What can we learn from this story?
If we want to know the love and the grace of Jesus deeply, if we want value and purpose for our lives, it only comes through brokenness.
And so the point of this morning’s sermon is this; the point of the sermon is “brokenness.” Stop trying to hide it. We need to stop trying to pretend like all the pieces fit together. Instead we must admit to ours ourselves and to God that we are broken and in need of God’s grace. Praying to God that these are the broken pieces of my life and I so much need You to mend me and keep me together, to make me whole.
OK, now what do we do with this? Do we try and keep hiding our brokenness? It’s almost human instinct to hide our true selves. We feel like it’s a matter of self preservation. Any little kid knows what to do when they break something; they hide it and hope no one finds out.
Are we as adults any different? Hiding our brokenness is not the answer. The answer is to admit it, to face it, and take it to Jesus. Just as this woman did. It is only then that we can be made whole. That we will have the peace that passes all understanding.
IN CLOSING:
There is good news! The good news is Jesus came to make us whole!
The good news is that God makes the broken whole through Jesus the Christ.
An example of how this is we find in {Isaiah 53:5}
“But He … But Jesus was wounded for the wrong we did. He was crushed for the evil we did. The punishment which made us well was given to Him, and we are healed because of His wounds.”
What Isaiah is saying here is, “We are made whole because He was broken!”
Jeremiah speaks of this as well; Jer. 18:1-5
In these verses Jeremiah is instructed by the Lord to go to the potter’s house and there God will give him His words.
We are told that Jeremiah observed that the potter was making a jar and it became flawed so he began to make something different with the pieces.
God says, (and I’m paraphrasing), “I know the people are broken, and just like the potter I will make them into something beautiful.”
Here is one more example: back in the 1500s the Japanese began the art of, “kinsugi.” Kinsugi is the art of taking broken pieces of ceramic and sealing them back together with gold. Instead of hiding the cracks of where the object was broken, the cracks are highlighted!
And here is what happens. The value goes up!
This is what God does for and to us. We are all broken people. We all have cracks, and we try and hide them.
Those very things that overwhelm us, those things that we are most afraid of, those things we keep secret, the things we most want to be
done with. Those are our cracks and God wants to put the pieces back together into a more valuable vessel! A more beautiful one. One made in the image of God. One made for God’s Kingdom.
Let’s pray:
