April 4, 2004

"Putting the Pieces Back Together"

I miss Charles Shultz. I have been a fan of the Peanuts comic strip all my life, and have always identified with Charlie Brown, the star of the strip. What do we know about Charlie Brown? That he is extremely insecure. As far as he’s concerned, life will always work out badly, like the time he was brought into the game as a relief pitcher, two outs in the ninth inning with a 50-0 lead. Guess who was the losing pitcher. That’s why Charlie Brown never got up the courage to talk to the little red-haired girl.

And like Charlie Brown, I have struggled with a broken heart or two in my life. Believe it or not, I have not always been the stud muffin you see before you this morning. Like Charlie Brown, I too was a nerdy, round headed kid with little self-esteem.

There’s a little bit of Charlie Brown in all of us. Most people grow up as reasonably functioning adults, but I find that when life gets tough, Charlie Brown comes to visit. When I am stressed out or tired or feeling rejected, that little insecure boy shows up again. That’s when I can feel the jagged edges of my heart poking me, jabbing my insides and causing sore spots, places where my heart has been broken and maybe still needs to be healed. Really, you never get too old to need your broken heart healed.

From time to time in my life, well-meaning people have come up to me, and earlier, to my mother, and said that I needed to pray for a physical healing for my polio. Those of you who are a little older may remember Katharine Kuhlman, who held healing services in Pittsburgh; many people came away from her services claiming to have been healed of a physical problem. I can remember some nuns visiting our home and bringing a relic of a saint. They placed the relic in the hand of my brother who was paralyzed by polio and said, “Squeeze it, Tommy.”

Again, I know they meant well, they were good ladies of faith, but they went away disappointed because they didn’t receive the healing they were looking for. And I think that happened to Jesus quite a bit during his ministry, even on Palm Sunday, the day he rode into Jerusalem as a funny kind of king, a humble king mounted on a donkey, not a war horse. The streets were lined with people shouting “Hosannah,” but if you remember your Hebrew you know that doesn’t mean “Yippee,” it means Help us, Save us, Heal us. It was an SOS to this man-God: “We’re in trouble here. Do something.”

We can understand their pleading. When do we tend to pray to God? When we need something, and not just anything, we most often pray, and especially pray most fervently, when we’re suffering physically, or when a loved one, a parent, a child, a grandma, suffers.

And the good folks of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, they had heard the stories of his wandering preacher from Galilee. Lots of quacks claimed to be healers then, much like now, but so often they turned out to be frauds. But this Jesus, everybody said he was the real deal.

So naturally they threw a parade in his honor, and cried, “Welcome to Jerusalem. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Now heal us.”

But Jesus looked over the crowd and said, “Physical healing isn’t what you need. Fixing your heart—that’s why I’m here.” Jesus had done a great deal of physical healing in three years of ministry—but he didn’t heal everybody he encountered. Why is that, do you think? When Jesus gave sight to the blind or made lepers clean or raised Lazarus from the dead, it was a sign that the Kingdom of God had arrived. In Jesus, God’s kingdom had dawned, and healing was a sign of its coming to the world.

But physical healing had to take second place to the central message that Jesus came to proclaim—your God is not a distant cloud dweller who doesn’t care, he is right here in the trenches with you, and what is important is that your heart be right with God’s heart. It’s far more important than any physical problem you have that love flow freely from God’s heart to yours, and back again.

Over and over in the scriptures, we read about a God who is close to his people, who cares about the pain they feel in their hearts. The message is that broken hearts can be mended. Wounds can be healed. We can be made whole. That’s what Christ-like healing is all about—being made whole. Sometimes that means that spiritual wellness is so much more important than physical wellness. So often in my brief ministry I have spoken to people who were hurting physically, or just plain worn out, but their spirit was strong .

That’s why I was so privileged to be with Gene Lowe shortly before he died. When Dave Brady and I visited him in the hospital his body was just plain worn out. He could barely talk, he was so weak. Yet when I told him that even though he didn’t want to be in the hospital having dialysis, that God was with him and cared about him, he managed a little smile and said, “I know.”

I’m going to talk more about Gene in a few minutes, but first I want to ask an important question: Who is God? Scripture says the Lord is a God of mind-boggling power, and at the same time, he's a God of love and compassion. Psalm 147 says, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power." The Lord is God of the stars, yet he concerns himself with the inner space of heartbroken people.

Jesus said in John 16, “In the world you’ll have trouble.” How many of you have discovered that’s so true? But then he said, “But take heart. I’ve overcome the world,” and the closer we get to him, the more we see that he has all things in his hands, that he does care about wrong and evil even more than we do; and in the end, he will do right and do away with all evil. So mourning is unavoidable, but we are promised comfort through our tears.

Psalm 30 promises that our grief is only temporary when it notes that “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.” When you’re down and out, you are still promised relief, as in Psalm 34, which says “The Lord is near to those who are discouraged; he saves those who have lost all hope. The good man suffers many troubles, but the Lord saves him from them all.”

But there are certain things that the Lord requires of his people, including an acknowledgement that when he works on our behalf, we’ll be grateful for what we have received. So many people are not grateful, yet wonder why their heart remains unhealed. I read a cute story this week about the central post office in Jerusalem.

Thousands of letters sent each year to God end up in a sorting office in Jerusalem. The letters arrive from all over the world.

"We have hundreds of thousands of letters sent either to God or Jesus Christ, and for some reason they come to Jerusalem," said post office spokesman Yitzak Rabihiya.

In one letter an Israeli man asked God for 5,000 shekels ($1,000), to ease his poverty. Postal workers were so moved that they passed the hat and sent him 4,300 shekels. "After a month the same person wrote again to God," Mr. Rabihiya explained, "but this time he wrote, 'Thank you, God, for the contribution, but next time please don't send it through those postmen. They're thieves; they stole 700 shekels'."

Another thing that God requires is that we should have a child-like dependence on the healing that comes from him.

Have you ever noticed how a cat, when it is wounded, will run away and disappear for a few days? It’ll go find a corner to hide and lick its wounds, and it won’t de dependent on anyone. Actually cats only grudgingly allow us humans to live in their world. But when a child falls down and gets hurt, the exact opposite happens--the child looks around for a source of comfort. How often have you seen a child skin his knee, look around until he sees his mama, and only then start bawling? It’s not the band aid he wants, it’s the kiss that accompanies it.

God wants us to come running to him when we’re hurting, both for the healing and the kiss. He wants us to have the attitude of the author of Psalm 138, who said “In the day when I cried out, you answered me, and made me bold with strength in my soul.”

How is your heart feeling this morning? Do you feel bold with strength in your soul? Or does your heart tell you something more like Isaiah 49, which says, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.”

Why do we have such a tough time believing God’s promises? Maybe it’s because we have trouble trusting anybody. Maybe the reason our heart was broken in the first place was that somebody really let us down big time. Hearts get broken for all sorts of reasons: It’s like the Wizard of Oz said to the Tin Man, “Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.” And the tin man replied, “but I still want one.” Sure we do—we want a heart that works really well, without pain. When love flows freely between humans, or between God and us, well, it feels a million times better than whatever feeling is in second place.

If you want to get beyond your hurts and your broken heart, then don’t picture God in terms of the people you know. If you think God is somehow like the people who have abused and betrayed you, then of course you won’t trust him. But the Lord says in the Bible, “I am God and not man—the holy one among you.”

In talking about the God who heals broken hearts, there are two stories I want to share with you. The first story shows that God heals our broken hearts when we most need his tender touch; the second shows that God takes action to heal us by using us to heal others.

First of all, I want to tell you about Gene Lowe’s funeral last Tuesday. I visited the funeral home last Monday night and the lines of people visiting stretched all the way back out to the sidewalk, it was incredible. And this was almost at the closing of the viewing hours. Still, I was able to talk privately with the children, and it was apparent that they truly were broken-hearted at the death of their dad. I always knew that Gene was a great guy, but the depth of feeling was remarkable. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that the children felt like the disciples felt after the death of Jesus. Grief stricken in every sense.

Marjory was hard-hit; she was concerned that she had done enough for her dad, even though she had just had him down to Florida for three months, making one of his last wishes come true. And she had arranged for her dad to go fishing on the ocean, where he caught a grouper. They had a picture at the funeral home of Gene and his grouper, and you never saw a prouder fisherman in your life. Gene’s oldest son Randy, a big, strapping, outdoors guy, also seemed to be especially devastated by the loss. All the children said they would have trouble getting through the next day’s funeral, especially the part where they wanted to come forward and talk about their dad together.

In my funeral sermon I concentrated on making the occasion a celebration of Gene’s life and accepting the peace that Jesus promised to leave with us. And then the children came forward together, sharing stories about Gene, and I want to tell you, the tears flowed like the Yough River in springtime. They held and supported each other, literally and figuratively, as they told of their memories, and you could just see how the tears were literally working to heal them even in the valley of their grief. Marjorie was especially moving; she wept hard, but then she said, “I didn’t think I could sing, but now I think I can,” and she sang a verse of Amazing Grace.

What she couldn’t see was me crying as I sat behind her at that moment. Now you’ll understand why I want to sing Amazing Grace for the hymn after the sermon today.

Now, I promised you a second story. I can’t say that I watch much television, but I do like “E.R.” I think I like that show because the writers do a great job of showing how the medical personnel need to be healed just as much as their patients do. Two years ago the show killed off one of the doctors who had been a cast member since the beginning, eight seasons. But they didn’t just kill him off, they came up with a dramatic story line that left a deep impact.

Dr. Mark Green had a daughter, Rachel, who was 14, and like many teenagers today, she was in deep trouble, taking pills and drinking. It was extremely scary for Mark, all the more so because he was dying of a brain tumor, and wouldn’t be around much longer to try to help his daughter. His heart was broken, but so was Rachel’s. Her parents had divorced, her stepfather was a jerk, her father had remarried and had a new little girl with his second wife, and Rachel felt that she didn’t belong anywhere. That no one cared.

Mark and Rachel tried to get close to each other in the days that he had left; he showed her how to surf and how to drive a stick shift, but you could still see both of them wince as the jagged edges of broken heart, sharp edges poking at them inside and making them bleed. Finally it became clear that Mark’s death was imminent, and he had not yet broken through with his daughter. One night Rachel came and sat on the edge of his bed, and Mark opened his eyes and whispered, “Rachel, be generous. Be generous with your time, your talent and your love.” Shortly after, he died.

There is an awful lot of wisdom packed into those few words, wisdom that a father ought to impart to his daughter. It’s hard to know whether Rachel heard them, but there is reason to hope. And ultimately, hope is all we have. Mark died with healing coming to his broken heart, and Rachel went on with her life and a memory that we think maybe, just maybe will bring some healing to her own broken heart. God uses us to bring healing to others, even as we are being healed.

We carry so much in our hearts for so long—so much pain, grief, loneliness, anger, despair, everything that breaks these hearts and leaves us with internal bleeding. The tragedy of life is that we don’t have to carry any of this junk. The Jesus who comes to us this morning on a donkey is willing to take all of it off our hands and haul it to the dump. In Jesus we see just how far God is willing to go to heal broken hearts. God keeps his promises, even if it costs him everything. Jesus, in fact, chose to die rather than abandon his people. Will you trust him with your heart this morning?