Broken In The Darkness In Order To Be Light - Psalm 51:1-17

We don’t like broken things.  If it can’t be quickly repaired with super glue, duct tape, or some other means, we are quick to throw it away or put it on a shelf or in a drawer and forget about it.  If it’s broken, it's worthless. Right?  I think that may be why some of us might struggle with the idea that what God desires is for us to be broken.  David writes, “The sacrifices acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

David penned these words after being confronted with the sin of his affair with Bathsheba and having her husband killed to cover their sin.  The prophet Nathan reveals to David the arrogance of his sin—the fact that he committed all of these acts without regard for what he was actually doing, actions that he would have readily condemned in others.  As David writes this poem, this song, he reflects that his pride led to his sin.  He confesses his sin before God, his need for forgiveness, and begs God not to throw him away, not to cast him off because of the sin. He cries out to God for forgiveness, asking that God might cleanse and heal him. He comes before God broken.

The question is, my friends, if God has laid out all of these elaborate required sacrifices, why would David say that God doesn’t want our sacrifices, that God would rather have us broken?  I think it is because David realized that we can go through the acts or rituals of making those required sacrifices, such as David did, without giving one thought to the significance of our actions, or without giving any thought that something might need to change about our lives.  How could that happen?

Martin Luther encountered that kind of thinking centuries later when he saw some in the Roman Catholic Church who began paying indulgences in order to be forgiven of their sin, before they ever committed the sin.  Martin Luther revolted from that idea, and others, as he broke away from the RCC, asserting that it is only through God’s grace that we are saved from our sin, not by any amount of money paid to have the sin washed away.  Unfortunately, that idea still persists, though, without the money, and not just in the RCC, but in other denominations, including the UMC.  In a previous appointment, I had a gentleman come up to me and tell me, “I’m taking my wife to Atlantic City.  And I know gambling’s a sin, but it’s okay, I’m already asking God to forgive me.  And preacher, if I win anything, I’ll give part of it to the church”. Asking God for forgiveness, as we intentionally sin, and expecting that forgiveness, is going through the ritual of sacrifice, without being broken.  That not only applies to “one-time-Atlantic-City” type sins, but those sins that we continue in every day (such as gossip, gluttony, hatred, addiction, and so on), realizing that they are wrong, maybe even asking forgiveness for, but never coming before God, broken, allowing Him to transform us.

You see, being broken is not always a bad thing.  When I read this passage as part of my devotional a week ago, it hit me, some things need to be broken in order to work.  I remember growing up, very allergic to bee stings, that when I would get stung, we would go in the house (or the camper if we were at the lake), pick up this little stick of After-Bite, shake it up, snap it (breaking the tube inside containing the medicine), and apply it.  Without breaking it, there would be no healing medicine. 

I also think of the old packs of smelling salts that would have to be broken in order to try to revive someone that had fainted.  Without it being broken, there would be reviving the person.

What I thought about, initially though, were neither of those, but of glow sticks.  This passage me think of glow sticks.  You know those luminescent glowing rods that many kids, and some adults, like to wear at concerts, fireworks, and other night time events.  They will wear them as bracelets, as necklaces, as crowns.  Some are short, others are long.  Some are thin and easily bend, others are thick and seem almost impossible to bend. A glow stick must be broken for the chemicals within it to mix and glow.  Without being broken, it is just a dull looking rod or stick that would never be seen in the dark.  The same goes for us.  Unbroken, we are lifeless.  We blend in with the darkness…in many ways we are part of the darkness…the darkness of sin.  It is only when we are broken, when the tough shell of our pride and arrogance is broken and we realize that we are in need of a Savior, that the grace and light of God can shine within us, and as it moves and flows within us, it will shine forth from our lives, brining light to the darkness around us.

Christ offered his life to be broken that we might be healed, that we might be revived.  Tonight as we come before God, as we begin this season of Lent, may we come before God broken.  Broken that we might be filled with the sin-forgiving, life-healing, spirit-reviving Grace of God.  And broken, filled with the grace of God, may God shine forth from us, illuminating the darkness about us.

This evening, you will be invited to come up and receive the ashes that remind us that we were created from dust, and that sin and death return us to dust.  You are invited to kneel at the altar rail, and if God leads you, write on one of the index cards an area of your life that during this season of Lent needs to be broken before God that He might heal you and revive you.  Then you are invited to hang the card upon our tree-covered cross…leaving it there before God.  As you leave the cross, you are invited to take one of the purple glow sticks from the vase at the base of the cross, break it, allow it to begin to glow, so that when you leave tonight, you are reminded to let the grace of God that fills your brokenness dispel the darkness within you and around you.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.