"There's a crack in everything.  That's how the light gets in."  "Anthem", Leonard Cohen


Texts:

Psalm 62:5-12

Jeremiah 20:7-13

2 Peter 3:1-7

First, I encourage you to read 2 Peter 3:1-9 instead of the appointed verses.  Verses 8 and 9, in my opinion, are words of hope to a people who so often find themselves in the "waiting place."

Second, the Jeremiah text is one of the only ones that brought me close to tears in class.  It was during January-term my first year of seminary, and I took the class Genesis to Revelation, in which we dove through most of the Bible in just 2 weeks.  For as long as I can remember, I have been noisy.  I think that, after learning how to talk, I never stopped.  It wasn't for lack of trying.  I would play games with myself, counting the number of times I spoke, saying "shut up" over and over again in my head, promising myself I wouldn't raise my hand in class one more time, each day waking up and saying, "Maybe today is the day I won't say something dumb."  The hard part is that I must confess, most of the time, I still live in that place.  Sometimes, communication seems the greatest gift.  At other times, it seems the gift of speech will be my undoing.  As Dr. Koester preached (really, you can't call that powerful of a lecture a lecture - it's a sermon!), Jeremiah and my stories intertwined themselves.  When Dr. Koester read verse 9, I felt my eyes welling up with tears: "If I say, 'I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,' then within me there is something like burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot."  What Dr. Koester said next hit it out of the park: "The only thing worse than preaching is trying not to preach."  All those times I had tried to shut myself up, tried to lie to myself about who I am, tried to lie about the broken holiness that has come with my gift of speech and form a more silent, more compliant version of myself, something like a freight train would go careening through me.  There were times, days, years, that I would allow the freight train to run through me as I tried to fit in, knowing on the inside that I would never "fit in," not really.  

This is - by no means - unique to me.  It is not the cause for pity and is certainly not a plea to name my bumbling blundering blabbering as something other than what it is.  None of us ever "fit in," really.  We are destined to be peregrini (wanderers), each uniquely created, each given broken holiness as our gift.  The brokenness reminds us that we need each other, God, and especially Christ, and the holiness reminds us that we are beloved, even on the days where we allow ourselves to die on the inside so that we can fit in on the outside.  We don't get better from being broken.  We're not supposed to.  The cracks and the missing shards are how the light gets in.

Without allowing the brokenness to take over, without holding it up as some indication that we have earned some sort of twisted favor, without making it the next vestige of works-righteousness, I wonder what it would look like if we acknowledged her presence without trying to fix or eradicate her, acknowledging that she's a part of us, and that she tells part of our story.  We must remember she doesn't tell the whole story. 

"The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to think, believe, and see themselves in a new way." (the last portion is my translation of "metanoia," which is the Greek word that is translated as "repentance, but is much bigger than that).

Our broken holiness is our gift.  May the brokenness keep our feet on the ground and Christ's holiness keep our heads in the clouds.