Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center, American University
March 2, 2008
Isaiah 61:1-4; John 11:17-37
Isaiah 61:1 The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.
4 They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.John 11:17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
I. BEGINNING
Somewhere on this campus, right now, perhaps in this very chapel, someone is coping with heartbreak. Someone is brokenhearted. It is a common enough occurrence. It is often written about in songs (usually the blues or r&b or country). It is often the subject of films and plays. It is a theme in our art.
Heartbreak is a painful thing. Described as “crushing grief, anguish or distress” [1] it is far more than just simply feeling sad or not getting something you wanted. A broken heart is serious business.
I have known my share of heartbreak. I know how I have felt. At first, there is shock—a stunned reaction to whatever the event is: the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, some other profound loss. But then the reality of the situation sets in and the condition worsens: sadness, emptiness, grief. And perhaps the most difficult part of all: God seems far away and the future seems bleak. Our plans are changed and we do not know what the future holds for us. I remember when my own engagement ended, the future I had planned—we had planned—was gone. The wedding, the honeymoon, the kids, the house, the dog—gone. All of it. In its place, only the void.
It is indeed a crushing feeling.
II. THE BROKEN HEARTED
And so I am moved by the fact that the brokenhearted are put in the same category as the oppressed, the captive, and the prisoners. In Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus reads from the scriptures in the synagogue at Nazareth, it is the passage from Isaiah we read earlier that he reads from:
Is. 61:1 The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor,
It is no small thing that heartbreak is included in this list. No small thing that Jesus’ ministry should be defined in part by binding up the brokenhearted. For heartbreak is no small thing.
For heartbreak is not just sadness. And while it doesn’t describe a chronic condition like depression, it is nevertheless something worthy of our attention.
III. HEARTBREAK
The Hebrew that underlies the English “brokenhearted” are words that literally means “broken of heart”. Actually, “shattered of heart” is probably a better translation. A CD player that doesn’t play CDs anymore is broken. A heart that is grieving the loss of a loved one is shattered. Smashed like an earthen vessel. The imagery is stark. And entirely accurate.
The pain of heartbreak is intense. Better perhaps to have broken a limb, for which a cast can be applied and a set time for healing known. It is precisely the inability to treat heartbreak or to know with certainty when the pain will be over that makes it so very difficult.
There are no easy answers. No quick solutions. Chocolate and funny movies may help in the short term, but after the friends have gone home or the ice cream has run out, you are left alone again with your sorrow. And with the void.
IV. THE HEART OF GOD
A. Jeremiah
Heartbreak and sorrow are often found in the Bible. There is an entire book entitled Lamentations. There is sorrow in Genesis, in the Psalms, in the prophets. There is one prophet in particular—Jeremiah—who is known as the “Weeping Prophet” because so many of his oracles are tinged with this sadness. Perhaps none is more evocative than this lament over the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians:
Jer. 8:18 My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
my heart is sick.
19 Hark, the cry of my poor people
from far and wide in the land:
“Is the LORD not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?”
(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
with their foreign idols?”)
20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.”
21 For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?
1 O that my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
for the slain of my poor people!
“My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick”
“For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.”
“O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people.”
Fewer words of greater feeling were ever penned. But even more than the obvious emotion of this passage, there has been one thing about this text that has fascinated me more than anything else.
Ancient Biblical manuscripts lack anything resembling punctuation. They are often written without spaces between the words. They certainly do not have quotation marks. And that brings up an interesting possibility.
Hebrew poetry is slippery sometimes in that it switches person or voice easily. The end of verse 19—(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”)—is placed in parentheses in the English to make it clear that this verse is spoken by God. But it points out an obvious possibility—how much more of this passage could be spoken by God? Are we sure that Jeremiah is the speaker of all these verses? In fact, in other passages in the book, it is not always clear whether Jeremiah is speaking, Jeremiah is speaking on behalf of God, or if God is doing the speaking.
What power there is when we imagine the possibility that it is God who says, “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick” and “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people.”
What a profound insight into the heart of God that is. I am inclined to believe that the text expresses not only Jeremiah’s feeling, but God’s as well.
B. God’s Heart
Is it conceivable that God’s heart should be otherwise? Do we not maintain that God is love? Do we not believe in our deepest being that God created us out of love and seeks out of that same love to be in relationship with us?
Is it so hard for us to imagine, then, that our disobedience, our constantly rejecting God, our turning our backs on God and seeking after our own way, breaks the heart of God? That rather than angry with us, God is heartbroken?
God gave us free will out of love. Acting out of our freewill we reject God. How could that not break the heart of God?
One of the great understandings of God that we have is of a God who is vulnerable, who chooses to love, and who suffers the heartbreak that comes with loving. God’s heart does not shy away from heartbreak. It embraces it. It knows heartbreak profoundly. But God’s heart likewise does not fail to love us, even us, heartbreakers though we be.
C. Jesus
It is something we see echoed in the passage from the Gospel of John read earlier. Here Jesus has arrived at the home of his friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Lazarus has died and his sisters Mary and Martha are disconsolate. Jesus asks where they have laid Lazarus and when they invite Jesus to come and see we are told:
35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus. A death he was about to undo by raising Lazarus from the dead! But his grief was no less profound. His sharing in heartbreak with Mary and Martha is clear.
It reminds me of a sermon preached by William Sloane Coffin, the great preacher of the Twentieth Century. In response to the death of his son Alex in an automobile accident, Coffin said these words at a worship service days later:
“When a person dies, there are many things that can be said, and there is at least one thing that should never be said. The night after Alex died I was sitting in the living room of my sister’s house outside of Boston, when the front door opened and in came a nice-looking, middle-aged woman, carrying about eighteen quiches. When she saw me, she shook her head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly over her shoulder, “I just don’t understand the will of God.” Instantly I was up and in hot pursuit, swarming all over her. “I’ll say you don’t, lady!” I said.
“For some reason, nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with his fingers on triggers, his fists around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is dead set against all unnatural deaths. And Christ spent an inordinate amount of time delivering people from paralysis, insanity, leprosy, and muteness. …. But violent deaths, such as the one Alex died — to understand those is a piece of cake. As his younger brother put it simply, standing at the head of the casket at the Boston funeral, “You blew it, buddy. You blew it.” The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is “It is the will of God.” Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.” [2]
“God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”
V. END
Somewhere on this campus, right now, perhaps in this very chapel, someone is coping with heartbreak. Someone is brokenhearted. Someone who feels that God is very far away. To that person (or people) I want to offer words of comfort.
As Christians, we are not guaranteed lives of uninterrupted happiness. We are going to love. We are going to suffer. We are going to have our hearts broken. There will be times when the nights seem long and the days devoid of hope.
It is in moments like that that we remember that our hope is not in vain. Our hope is in a God, not who is far away, but who knows our heartbreak, who understands our grief. Our hope is in the one who wept at Lazarus’ tomb. Who mourned the deaths of the Egyptians at the Red Sea. Who lamented his slain people in Jerusalem. And who stands with us today, sharing in our broken hearts, consoling us in our grief. And loving us without ceasing.
Notes
[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heartbreak[2] http://www.pbs.org/now/society/eulogy.html