Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Pray with me.
Gracious Lord, we give thanks for the living and active word of God.
Would you quiet our minds, remove any distractions and soften our hearts to receive wisdom and understanding.
Anoint your servant grace with your message of truth so we may leave this place transformed.
Amen.
Our first reading is from the Gospel of John, chapter 21, verses 15 through 19.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?
And he said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
Jesus said to him, feed my lambs a second time. He said to him, simon, son of John, do you love me?
He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
Jesus said to him, tend my sheep.
He said to him the third time, simon, son of John, do you love me?
Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, do you love me?
And he said to him, lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.
Jesus said to him, feed my sheep.
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.
And he said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.
And this he said to him, follow
[00:02:11] Speaker B: me
[00:02:15] Speaker A: from the prophet Jeremiah, the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord.
Come, go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.
So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.
The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel as it seemed good to him.
Then the word of the Lord came to me.
Can I not do with you, O house of Israel? Just as this potter has done, says the Lord, just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Good morning, Knox.
What a joy it is to be here with you again. Happy Mother's Day.
Will you join me in prayer?
Loving God, thank you for bringing us together as a family.
I ask, oh God, that your spirit would flow here this morning.
I ask, oh God, that I would decrease that you might increase, so that your word and your will would be made known to your people and all your people together. Say Amen.
We all have our idiosyncrasies, that we all possess don't we?
Some quirkier than others, some more irritating, some puzzling. But each of us as humans, we have our.
Our bents and our strange habits that our beloveds must put up with. We know that we all have them.
One of my weird idiosyncrasies that my beloved has had to put up with for almost 33 years is that when I buy something new, whether it is an appliance or a phone or anything that we buy that has a thing, thin plastic film or sheen that is used to protect it after production or shipping, you all know what it is, right?
When I get it, I don't want to take it off.
Does that make sense?
Okay, some of you get me.
About a half a year ago, our refrigerator went kaput. It gave up. The ghost. After weeks and months of this agonizing and persistent wheezing sound, we had had it over 20 years.
So we got a new one. And it arrived with the thin coat of plastic lining on the handles and the ice maker.
It's now been more than a half a year. And that plastic film is still on there.
Charlie knows that than to take it off prematurely.
So this is only one of legion of my particular quirks. And Charlie chuckles at me. But I don't want that thin plastic film to be taken off.
I like it on there. I think because it means to me that. That this item is still new.
It's unblemished.
It's still shiny and pristine. It is protected in a way.
So this made me think about other things in life in which we might regard in the same way.
But the fact is that we live in a world that loves the new.
We often chase what is shiny, unblemished, full of promise.
We like things when they are protected and they are undamaged. We love new things.
And the first time when our new car gets a ding because someone runs a shopping cart into it, or the new toy gets chipped, or you discover that your favorite sweater has a moth hole, oftentimes the first thing that something gets a flaw.
We're so disappointed because we wanted it to stay new and shiny.
And it's just not the same anymore.
Why do we want everything in our lives to stay pristine and untouched?
Who knows? Maybe because some of us struggle with what is flawed or worn or broken. And not only just in the objects around us that surround us, but in each other and very often in ourselves.
Why can't we accept ourselves when we are flawed?
Why can't we accept ourselves when life is flawed?
Why do we desire or demand such an unrealistic perfection in everything.
We know what it's like to want a clean slate, a fresh start, something spoiled.
But the Christian story invites us into meeting a God who meets us in our flaws, our cracks, our dents, and refuses to throw us away.
A God who restores us, sets us on a path that we cannot yet see.
So today, I'd like us to hover around the tension that we carry between wanting life to be shiny, perfect and protected, and the God who works most powerfully through what is imperfect and unfinished.
There is something deeply human about wanting the bright and shiny.
And it's not entirely shallow, really, because newness symbolizes hope, doesn't it?
And we always hope.
We always yearn for hope in our lives.
The prophet Isaiah speaks God's word to Israel.
Do not remember the former things, for I am about to do a new thing.
New things make us feel like we can begin again.
They whisper to us. This time it will be different.
This time it will be just right.
But here is the trouble.
We often fall in love not with true newness, but with the shininess.
We love what is polished.
We love what has yet to disappoint us.
And we love the illusion of perfection.
But that illusion oftentimes doesn't last too long.
Objects get scratched, relationships get complicated. Communities get messy. Bodies age and they become ill, and our spirits get weary.
And because.
Because we have been conditioned to value the flawless, we can begin to. To doubt worth the moment we see our own cracks or the cracks of others.
Why do we struggle so much with flaws and brokenness?
Perhaps it's because brokenness confronts us with a stark reality, a reality that we would rather avoid.
The psalmist cries out in Psalm 51, create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
Notice that the psalmist does not say, make me perfect, God, make my life perfect, God, he says, create again in me because he knows something important, that we are all, as we know, works in progress.
But our culture struggles to accept that we avoid broken things. We hide broken emotions, we deny broken patterns. We mask broken relationships because they are hard to confront.
Maybe it's because brokenness reminds us of our limits. It reminds us that we are human and so broken.
And often it reminds us of our past.
But brothers and sisters, the God of scripture does not shy away from broken things. In fact, the good news is that God does God's best work in the broken things.
In Jeremiah 18, what we read together, God sends the prophet to the potter's house. And Jeremiah watches as the potter shapes clay on the wheel. And then he watches it collapse in his hands, misshapen and flawed.
But the potter neither scolds the clay nor does he throw it out. He simply starts again.
He reshapes it gently and patiently. And then God says, can I not do with you as the potter has done?
And this is the heart of God to toward us.
God is not shocked by our collapse, not offended by our imperfections, not disappointed when our lives fall out of shape.
God is the potter who never gives up on the clay.
One of the most powerful declarations in the New Testament comes to us from Second Corinthians. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away, See, everything has become new.
And this is not an invitation to pretend that nothing was ever broken in the first place. It is a promise that God gives that God will transform us every day, brokenness and all.
And the disciples knew brokenness all too well know that Peter denied Jesus three times. And yet in John 21 on the beach, Jesus finds Peter and restores him not with the expectation for perfection, but only with love. And he says to him, peter, do you love me?
Only the words, do you love me?
And then follow me.
Jesus looks beyond Peter's past and he calls him into a new future.
I think it's easy to think that God is disappointed with our flaws as we are.
But Scripture again and again paints a very different picture.
Paul gives us this assurance. The one who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion.
The statement isn't may bring it to completion.
Hopefully brings it to completion. The Word is the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.
The work in us is not finished yet. We are in process. We are being shaped and recrafted and restored every single moment of our lives.
Today is Mother's Day, and we remember our mothers and our relationships with them or women who served as mothers.
It's a complicated day.
I am the proud mother of four adult children.
But I cannot even tell you how often.
How often I think about all the mistakes that I made when I was parenting young children.
How I had certain expectations of myself and how disappointed I was when those things that I wanted to do or who I wanted to be did not come to fruition because of my brokenness.
Or how many of us are disappointed when our partners or our friends or our spouses let us down and they're not the person that we thought they were. During the honeymoon period of our relationship.
So I want to encourage us all today.
Let's not fear the unfinished places. Let's not despise our flaws or what is wrong in our lives. Let's not give up when things are not perfect.
Not in our relationships or in our faith or in our life.
Because the God who began a good thing in us is not done.
And God is not discouraged.
The stories of the Bible are meant to teach us for our lives.
That is what it means for us to be disciples of Christ.
So look. Look at the people that God chose to teach us.
Moses, a stutterer, a murderer, a runaway. Jonah, who was angry, reluctant and resentful.
Ruth, a foreign refugee, widow within the future. King David, a man so gifted and so deeply flawed.
God does not choose the shiny.
God chooses the willing.
God chooses the honest.
And God chooses broken, makes them more whole.
The gospel is not the story of flawless people who got it right every single time.
It is the story of wounded people loved into healing, of flawed people called into a purpose, of broken people entrusted with good news.
I want to share with you a photo that one of my Pali Press family members shared with me recently.
Brian's house burned down in the fires.
And just a few months ago, more than a year after the fires, he decided to go running.
And he decided to run past his lot where his house once stood.
And this is the tree in their neighboring lot, in their street.
This tree preaches the best sermon I've heard in years.
This tree tells us that life can be wounded and it can still be faithful.
The fire did not spare the tree, but it did not take it.
Half of this tree stands charred and stripped away, while the other half is unmistakably alive and green, giving it shade.
Friends, God's presence in your life is not measured by unbrokenness or a perfect life.
The burned side of that tree doesn't undo the living, and the living side does not ignore the injured side. They coexist the broken.
And the new and new life does not arrive orderly and decently. It grows where and when it can.
That tree is a living paradox, just as Jesus was.
Because, friends, destruction is never the final word.
Look at the hope that that tree held.
Look at the life that is waiting to happen in a new and different way.
So why do we love what is shiny?
Because we long for hope.
And God teaches us that hope is not just found in the flawless.
Hope is found in. In the faithful one who works through flaws.
And why do we struggle with what is broken? Because brokenness reveals the truth.
And yet that truth is exactly where God meets us.
God is doing a new thing in you right now.
Even if your life doesn't look shiny, even if we don't feel perfect, even if our story has cracks and burns and scars.
I heard a beautiful line just recently.
Scars are the evidence of a life truly lived.
So friends, this is our hope, that our scars show our living, that we are not finished, that God who began a good work in us, God who is a master potter, that God who restored Peter on the beach, that God calls us forward into our future, into our purpose, into the new thing that God is doing for us and because of us and despite us, because we are loved and because we hold hope even with all our scars.
And perhaps, just perhaps, our true beauty shows not when we are untouched but when God's fingerprints can be seen all throughout our lives.
Let it be so.
Amen.
