Rev’d Jonathan Gale
Ecclesiastes 12: 1a, 6a
Remember your creator … 6before the silver cord is snapped,* and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain,
Lamentations 3: 1 – 6, 21 – 26
God’s Steadfast Love Endures
3I am one who has seen affliction
under the rod of God’s * wrath;
2 he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
3 against me alone he turns his hand,
again and again, all day long.
4 He has made my flesh and my skin waste away,
and broken my bones;
5 he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
6 he has made me sit in darkness
like the dead of long ago.
21 But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,*
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘therefore I will hope in him.’
25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
26 It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
Matthew 12: 15 – 21
God’s Chosen Servant
15 When Jesus became aware of this, he departed. Many crowds* followed him, and he cured all of them, 16and he ordered them not to make him known. 17This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
18 ‘Here is my servant, whom I have chosen,
my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased.
I will put my Spirit upon him,
and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.
19 He will not wrangle or cry aloud,
nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.
20 He will not break a bruised reed
or quench a smouldering wick
until he brings justice to victory.
21 And in his name the Gentiles will hope.’
Each of us is created a precious vessel of God’s love, and yet each of us has experienced hurt in some way, bringing a sense of brokenness.
Most of you know that my passion in life is mountain biking and that for the past 20 months I have been struggling with a lung condition that has kept me off my bike and out of the countryside. Truthfully – I have found this experience shattering.
What you may not know is that one of the reasons I started cycling long ago was due to a series of knee injuries and operations to my right knee. About once every eight years or so my knee packs in. Last time it happened I was on crutches for 2 weeks before it normalised.
Well, on Wednesday morning I woke up and my knee was showing the signs of having been traumatised. By Wednesday night I was in agony.
I have every hope that with rest it will improve but it serves as a lesson that we are vulnerable. When Paul is describing the fact that we are temples that house God he uses the image of clay jars. But we have this treasure in jars of clay .. (2 Corinthians 4: 7) he says. Clay jars shatter easily.
It’s not just vulnerability. I learnt from a gym instructor recently that our muscles start deteriorating when we reach the age of seventeen! Up ‘til then they grow whatever we do, after that they need exercise and especially as we get older.
Our Ecclesiastes reading presents a beautiful but profoundly sad picture of death at work in us Remember your creator … 6before the silver cord is snapped,* and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain,
We break down. We experience shattering. At times the breakages are worse than at other times. Things happen to us. I grew up in a country that had horrific road accident statistics and I always marvelled that we had never been involved in a car accident. I thought our family was somehow special, that we were immune. And then it happened. My father was on leave and had been into the city to purchase some pots and stoves for a school feeding scheme my mother had founded and he saw a car travelling at tremendous speed in the opposite direction. They were both approaching a bend so my father pulled off the road and stopped. The car came off the road and hit him so hard his front right hand wheel was lodged behind the front passenger seat with my Dad behind it, squashed up against the back seat and door.
What saved him was an ambulance travelling 5 minutes behind him. Needless to say he was in ICU for a number of weeks and only just survived. In fact he was still in hospital when my son was born and I can remember us taking him down the hospital corridor to meet his grandfather in the Orthopaedic ward. Shattering.
Sometimes with Jeremiah (in Lamentations 3) we feel like saying:
4 He has made my flesh and my skin waste away,
and broken my bones;
5 he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
6 he has made me sit in darkness
like the dead of long ago.
This is especially so for anyone who suffers from prolonged stress or mental illness.
I once saw a bumper sticker that said (and excuse the language), “Life’s a bitch and at the end you die.” Now I don’t want us all to begin wallowing in misery and start recalling friends who have died of cancer or taken their lives.
Let’s focus on ourselves for a moment and consider that if we’re honest, our mortality is all too apparent – all of us have been shattered at times.
Bet here’s the thing. As a result of my father’s serious injury he could no longer continue his missionary work , but he could study for the priesthood. He did so and a whole new era of ministry opened up for him and in his early eighties he was still playing a major role in pastoring a congregation in Port Elizabeth.
Now I’m not saying that something better always comes out of suffering, but what I am saying is that those who grasp hold of God find new relationship with God through their suffering. Our mortality – the very thing that makes us vulnerable – also acts as a means of encouraging us to lean on God.
There is a pattern in Scripture, especially in the Psalms, of the writer presenting the pain of life to God and then reaching a realisation of just how good God has been in spite of the suffering.
In our reading this morning:
21 But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,*
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘therefore I will hope in him.’
25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
26 It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
Contrition (that sense of quiet submission to God) is always met with overwhelming love and grace. Brokenness is met with repair, with healing, for Jesus is gentle with us.
20 He will not break a bruised reed
or quench a smouldering wick
until he brings justice to victory.
As we receive the imposition of ashes this evening let us remember that we are flawed but very precious vessels (clay jars) that possess the huge privilege of bearing within us the treasure that is the God who loves us.
And as we come, contrite, confessing, penitent – simply realising our humanity in all its brokenness – let’s remember that Jesus is bursting with excitement because it is in our acknowledging the reality of who and what we are before God, that enables God to restore, heal and comfort the shattered us, with his redeeming love.
Amen.