In Evangelical Christian circles over the last few years the phrase brokenness has made appearance so often in both word and concept that I have observed an unintended dilution taking place. The devastation at the nucleus of the word ‘brokenness’ has been replaced by the equivalent of an Insta-beauty twenty-year old sporting her fake glasses and messy bun trying to convince us all of what a wreck she is through humble-brag apologies. Meanwhile, our naked faces, bloodshot eyes, and messy homes realize there is ultimately no safe place...even our messes have to look attractive. It’s freaking exhausting.
My purpose here is to take a moment and pause before the concept of brokenness irreparably transforms into a word of false negatives, where untidiness and staged chaos white-washes the truer synonyms of wreckage, depravity, turmoil, and chaos. For what we cannot properly define, we cannot own, and what we cannot own, we will never be emancipated from.
Over the last few weeks, my liturgical upbringing has been mentally stalking me, calling me to remember the liturgical tradition of Lent. I cannot concentrate on any message series or sermons not intricately intertwined in the roots of Lent. My soul longs for the pause and sobriety of this physical season leading up to Easter. And, for other non-denomers, or evangelicals, who might find themselves wholly distracted and disengaged with messages of any nature other than the Lenten season, I would like to invite you to my table.
I was brought up in the Catholic faith. We attended a Presbyterian church in my middle school years. I took ownership of my personal faith as a late teenager through a Para-Church organization, Young Life, and by default attended a Charismatic-Pentecostal church the last year of High School. In college, I went to a Methodist church, and later a non-denomination one, where I have remained for the greater part of the last 20+ years. Would now be a good time for a pie chart?
Life hit hard, and over the last 7 years I have personally renounced, tenant by tenant, the teachings and beliefs of the American Prosperity Gospel, a belief system I didn’t even recognize I was a member of. This severing was not just a theological disentanglement, but an extremely personal one. I have wrestled and studied and contemplated the macros and nuances of the Bible, Christian culture, and the Church at large. It is something my brain cannot physically stop thinking about. Like most of you regarding all things faith and church, I’ve grieved disillusionment, I’ve faced wounded-ness, and I continually fight the urge to extended judgement and withhold mercy. What has changed the most for me, though, year over year, is that in addition how I now define the concept of ‘healing’ (that’ll sit for another time), I have much more of an ability to hold two opposing forces in my one set of hands.
Grief and Joy.
Failure and Victory.
Righteousness and Sin.
Grace and Truth.
This all confirms the mysterious concept of a Holy God being wholly present in our naked honesty.
As I have participated the past week in a Liturgical observance and daily study of the Lenten Season, I am ever more confident of its spiritual value and Seasonal purpose. Lent is a Biblical journey to the cross of Christ. It is a slow walk, coinciding with the time of year where our longing for physical light has made us both tired and restless. Lent allows us the broadened space to identify our heavier-than-we-can-carry burdens. It allows us the space to dump all of our trash out on the table. Lent is the time to unpack the weight that crushes the lungs, both the consequences of living in a broken world, and a less popular concept: the consequences of our own iniquities and sin.
What of these do you recognize, face to face: disappointment, disillusionment, death of loved ones? Complexities of mental health, divorce, wayward children, financial lack, aging, sickness, the brokenness of the foster care system? Do you have loved ones at war, how have you been affected by racism? Are you overwhelmed by the refugee crisis, fear of plague, how to provide for your loved ones with special needs once you die? Where have you been personally offended, publicly chastised, misunderstood, stolen from, betrayed? What are the relationships that have been severed? What are the nature of your addictions? Are you carrying the weight of hidden sin? Do you know the patterns of your rage and anger? Are you selfish, are you greedy, are you unteachable, what do you lust? Who are you better than, who are you blind to? Just like me you probably have multiple fish in the same polluted pond. It’s overwhelming and cathartic all at the same time.
The Season of Lent affords us the time and ground we need as humans to press the pause button and reject the surface level veneer of our broken things. We are invited into a season of grief, contemplation, and ownership. As we walk with Jesus towards the cross, we examine our own hands, we see our own names on the nails we each carry. We point ourselves towards the cross, one humble, weary, tired step at a time. We simultaneously look ahead and remember that on the other side of Calvary there is a new dawn. The freedom of this Lenten walk is that you get to be a human. You get to have anxiety, there’s no shame in your depression, you aren’t expected to Sephora your ugly. You are allowed to have the kind of brokenness that ain’t no one wanna be posting on the Gram. Exhale. Lent provides you the path and boundaries necessary to truly observe this essential One thing: The Cross. What it is, what it means, how you play a part, and how it ultimately and forever changes things for the Christ follower.
Truth and Grace.
Hard Truth and Costly Grace.
I pray that in whatever way you are observing the Lenten season, that you grant yourself the space to contemplate and participate in this holy walk of suffering, grief, and confession. Easter is not about seeing how many people you can invite to your Sunday service. It’s not about church growth, your ‘responsibility’ to evangelize the World, being a disciple making machine, or how awesome you are for your ability to consistently choose joy. It is a blessing to be given a time frame within the church calendar that allows us to cease from cognitive dissonance inducing practices that segregate the harder parts of the human experience from the false pressures found in surface level doctrine. Lent is such a more vulnerable, tangible, and human friendly time. It’s bread and wine. Lent is preparation. And, Lent’s ultimate beauty is that it doesn’t wait until the other side of Easter to rejoice in what Christ has done. It fortifies a deep-inside-my soul gratitude that I get to be me, where I am today, honest, naked, needy, without pretense, on the walk towards the Friday of Goodness and Sorrow. And, walking beside me is the gentle One. I will crucify Him, bury Him, mourn His death and my participation.
And, then I will watch Him rise.