Living in Brokenness and Vulnerability

4th in the Series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey toward mature discipleship*

Why is it that we are such emotional wrecks? When it comes to the beneath the surface stuff, that 90% is killing us! We are in our 4th message in the series: Putting the Pieces Together; a Journey Toward Mature Discipleship, and we’ve already established that God made us emotional beings on purpose, and that exploring beneath the surface and breaking the power of the past is hard, necessary work. We don’t break the power of the past just to let it fester on the surface, but to let God transform and redeem it.

One of the ways God does this is by working through our brokenness and vulnerability. When we sing Jesus Loves Me, we sing about this: "we are weak, but He is strong." Through our weakness, we can see His strength. God does this all the time; He acts miraculously but does it in such a way as to demonstrate that it is He who is acting, not us.

Gideon, whose story I shared a couple of months ago, is a good example. God called Gideon, who was the runt of the litter of the weakest clan of the smallest tribe, to lead His people, and then told Gideon he had too many fighting men to win the battle.

Unfortunately, we want control. We want to feel like we have control over what’s going to happen and so we want things to happen in our timing and by our rules. Contrary to that attitude is the Apostle Paul who writes (2 Corinthians 12:5b, 7-10) I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses…To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

Three times I pleaded with the LORD to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I often think of God’s sense of humor in calling me to ministry. I’m sure he laughs every Sunday to see me in the pulpit. But maybe it’s because of my weakness that I sometimes can’t believe it. You see, when I’m talking about someone who wonders how everyone would perceive them if only they knew what was deep beneath the surface, I am talking about myself. One of the common traps I fall into is thinking, "If they knew the real me, they wouldn’t like it."

Paul wrote about a thorn in the flesh; for years, commentators have been debating what that was, but that’s not important. What is important is that it was something that made him feel so weak that it forced him to be dependent on God. He reflected on how weak, fractured, and broken he was and came to the result: If God can use me, he can use anyone. It’s not about you and me; it’s about Jesus in us. It’s about what God did and God choosing you and me, not about our abilities and talents. The Kingdom of God is about His strength, not ours!

Our world treats weakness and failure as terminal. Therefore we (rightly) pray for healing and deliverance from them. What would happen if God’s answer was "No, I don’t want to heal you. I want to use your brokenness and vulnerability."?

One of the most difficult circumstances I ever went through was a break-up with a fiancée. I’m not going to go into the details, but it was extremely painful, and I did some serious soul searching, usually coming up empty. The loop that was playing in my head was Led Zeppelin’s song "Nobody’s Fault But Mine." Literally. I was a senior in college, living in the fraternity, and for a time, I couldn’t deal with anyone and any little situation would cause me to break down.

Now, by this time the whole fraternity knew that I was a Christian and that I led a Bible study in the house. I think there were some younger guys for whom I wasn’t approachable; I was the senior who had it all together. But when they saw me broken and vulnerable, they saw a Brian who was approachable with their problems. In fact, Charlie, most unlikely person, came to me when his girlfriend broke things off with him. Why? Because he knew I would be real with him. And it gave me a chance to share God’s grace with Charlie. Paul’s words are a good reminder here: when I am weak, I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).

An old story illustrates this truth:

There once lived a water carrier in India. Every day he took two large pots
and attached them to a pole suspended across his neck. One of the pots had a
large crack in it while the other was perfect. The perfect pot always delivered
a full portion of water, while the cracked pot was only half full by the time it
arrived. For two years they made this same journey, and the perfect pot became
proud of its accomplishments. The cracked pot became ashamed for only bringing
half its water. It lamented about the crack; b/c of my flaws, the master is only
getting ½ of his water. The water carrier instructed the pot to observe the
flowers along the path – he noticed that there were flowers only on his side of
the path but not on the perfect pot’s side. They are because of your crack. Two
years ago I planted seeds on your side and every day while we passed these
spots, you watered them. B/c you are cracked, I have been able to pick those
flowers to decorate the master’s table. Without you being just the way you are,
I would not have this beauty to grace his house.

This is just the way God works: using cracked pots to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

If you think about it, there are a thousand stories about a thousand messed-up people in the Bible, and God used them anyway. Noah had a drinking problem. Moses stuttered and had a short fuse. Abraham lied. Jacob was a compulsive liar. David lusted, abused power, and murdered. Solomon collected wives like Dr. Jim collects baseball cards. Jeremiah was depressed. Jonah was suicidal. Peter denied Jesus. James and John were quick to anger and were most worried about power and position. Gideon and Thomas doubted. John Mark deserted Paul. Timothy had ulcers.

The good news is that God used each one of them, cracked pots as they might be, for His glory and His purpose. And He still does.

Today we are bringing up an inward generation. They have lost faith in anything "up there" and have been failed by everyone "out there" and are thus seeking: is there something meaningful and solid "in here"? Thus they give ultimate priority to the personal and tend to withdraw into the self.

Thus we live in an age where loneliness has become one of the most painful human wounds. The worst sort of loneliness is the kind where you’re all alone in a crowd, where there are all kinds of people around, but they never notice you.

Maybe this song will remind you what loneliness is like: (Eleanor Rigby) Maybe some of you know this kind of loneliness. I do. It’s lonely being a United Methodist Pastor. We are moved frequently, we’re generally isolated from friends and colleagues, and there has traditionally been a distance between pastor and parishioner, so it’s hard to make friends. There is even a term for us; we’re "acceptable outsiders" – we’re allowed to come into the town and have a place here, but we’re always reminded that we are outsiders.

This is one reason why I insist on coming out here to talk to you – it takes away a little of the distance between me and you. In my last church, I expressed this desire and was told, "You’re not an outsider. You don’t have any reason to be lonely." If that was true, why were my only real friends the pastor and youth pastor in the other church in town?

But I was lonely well before I became a pastor; in high school I felt alienated from my peers and though I always had friends, I never felt like I was part of any of the groups.

Why do I tell you this? So you will feel sorry for me? Not remotely. It’s a reminder. It’s a reminder that everybody hurts, even your pastor.

The question is: what do we do about it? What do we do with the pain? Henri Nouwen, one of my heroes of the faith, who lived a profoundly lonely life, wrote this: the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon – a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding.

Our loneliness can stand as a reminder that we really don’t belong here. That we were created for something more – for a pure relationship with God, that we were built for heaven and that we were meant to be together in Community with God. When the Bible tells us we were made in God’s image, God’s image is always a trinity – always Father, Son, and Spirit, three Persons always in Community with one another. We weren’t built for superficial relationships!

Listen to what Nouwen says in his book The Wounded Healer:

When we want to give up our loneliness and try to overcome the separation and
incompleteness we feel, too soon, we easily relate to our human world with
devastating expectations. We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated,
intuitive knowledge – that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender
kiss, no community, commune or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to
satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition.

The truth is so disconcerting and painful that we are more prone to play games with our fantasies than to face the truth of our existence. Thus we keep hoping that one
day we will find the man who really understands our experiences, the woman who
will bring peace to our restless life, the job where we can fulfill our potentials, the book which will explain everything, the place where we will feel at home. Such false hope leads us to make exhausting demands and prepares us for bitterness and dangerous hostility when we start discovering that nobody, and nothing, can live up to our absolutistic expectations.

Many marriages are ruined because neither partner was able to fulfill the often hidden hope that the other would take his or her loneliness away. And many celibates live with the naïve dream that in the intimacy of marriage their loneliness will be taken away.

If you want to pay attention to someone without intention, you have to be at home in your own house; discover the center of your life in your own heart.

If we can be at home in our own houses and allow God to be the center of our lives, we can articulate the inner moments of our lives, which frees us to remove the obstacles that prevent the Spirit from entering. Did you know that one of the biggest indicators of emotional immaturity is blaming? When we blame others and claim a victim mentality, we will never move beyond it, because it’s always somebody else’s fault.

But when we accept our own brokenness and lead from a place of vulnerability, we put our own faith at the disposal of others. Why is this important? Because we are a generation without fathers, and authority from the top down is immediately suspect. If you work with young people, you know that your first task is to earn their trust. Why? Because we do not automatically trust authority. And that trait is being manifest at a younger and younger age. (as an aside, I think it’s funny that I’m considered "young clergy" by the denomination, but any teenager will tell you that 37 is old).

Leading from vulnerability, however, is a way to build trust. In fact, it’s the only way to lead. No pastor can save anyone. I never died on a cross for anyone’s sins. I can offer myself to Jesus to use as a guide for you. I can help you articulate your inner events, all the while never knowing "just how you’re feeling." Only the Holy Spirit can truly do that.

Compassion is at the core of authority, and we cannot get to a place of compassion without realizing and accepting our own brokenness. When we realize how far we are from perfect, we can be free to love, accept, and forgive others. When Peter asked Jesus how many times he was supposed to forgive, Jesus told a story about a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. He went to a servant who owed him millions of dollars. The servant couldn’t pay, so the master ordered everything he had (including his family) to be sold to repay the debt. He begged the master to be patient with him. The master took pity on him, cancelled the debt, and let him go.

But when that servant went out, he found a fellow servant who owed him a few dollars. He choked him and had him thrown into prison over that debt. The other servants heard what happened and told the master, who brought in that servant. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’

This gives us the negative picture – a picture of not leading out of brokenness and vulnerability. In the end, the master turned that servant over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed, and Jesus finishes by saying, "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." Pretty harsh, yes, but it’s an obvious call for us to live out of brokenness and vulnerability rather than our own strength.

God calls us and enables us to looks for signs of hope and promise in our situation, not only for us, but also for others. Because when we lead from a position of vulnerability, we do exactly as Jesus, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

God will be faithful to use us to reach others if we will take Jesus’ attitude and lead out of brokenness and vulnerability.

*Note: this message, along with others in this series, has been adapted from Peter Scazzero's book The Emotionally Healthy Church.