“There is a gift, when things are so broken we can no longer pretend they are whole, because then we can admit they have been broken for a long time. Then we can admit that we have been broken for a long time. There is a gift to knowing we are broken because then we can begin to heal. Do not fear the cracks in our nation, the cracks in our church, the cracks in ourselves. That’s how the light gets in.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, February 2, 2020. Readings: Micah 6:1-8, and Matthew 5:1-12.
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Hear the Gospel according to Leonard Cohen:
We asked for signs
The signs were sent:
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah, the widowhood of every government
Signs for all to see.
I can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up a thundercloud
They’re gonna hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
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There is a gift when things are so broken, we can no longer pretend they are whole.
We pretend that our hearts are not heavy with grief until the tragedy of a death undoes us so completely that an entire city cannot help but stop everything and weep.
And we feel the healing power of the grief that follows that much love.
We pretend that the injustice in the world is manageable until the very people we depend on to uphold those most sacred covenants of justice fail spectacularly on the world’s greatest stage.
And we feel the healing power of the rage that this isn’t how it is supposed to be.
There is a gift when things are so broken, we can no longer pretend they are whole. Because then we can admit they have been broken for a long time.
Then we can admit we have been broken for a long time.
Then we can pick up the broken pieces.
…hold the broken pieces
..grieve the broken pieces.
We can admit, at long, long last, that our myths of exceptionalism – of ourselves, our church, our nation – are just that … myths.
And we can ring the bells that still can ring
We can forget our perfect offering
And know that there is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
This morning we heard the courtroom drama of the sixth chapter of Micah. Now we know all about courtroom dramas. We have been transfixed by one going on in Washington for weeks.
But this trial is much bigger. All creation is the courtroom and jury, and God is the plaintiff:
“Come and plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice … for God has a dispute with the people and is putting Israel on trial.”
God has a dispute. But not just God. This is a class action suit. In the writings of the prophets, God is always the plaintiff, the nation is always the accused, the plea is always on behalf of the poor and vulnerable. And the charge is always … economic.
“I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery.” God cries.
“My dream for you was not to raise up great kings, build up great armies, amass storehouses of riches. My dream for you was to gather and share. To welcome the stranger and care for the refugee and orphan. To hold each other, defend each other, care for each other, love each other.”
500 years had passed since that journey to freedom … since Israel had been freed from being slaves to an empire itself enslaved to a vision of exceptionalism through domination.
500 years since God had shown them that living together in the desert was better than being chained together in a palace.
500 years … and they have become the enslavers from which God had longed to free them.
Now, there is a ruling class, about two percent of the population, that hoards great wealth, amasses huge armies and builds giant monuments … all from the labor of the people.
And to keep the wealth flowing, the wealthy disproportionately police impoverished communities, trap the poor under crushing debt, and make the poor utterly dependent on a financial system where the wealthy make all the rules.
And justice? Justice is provided by a court of men at the village gate. And the wealthy easily use the money they hold over their heads to coerce the rulings they want. And any appeals are heard by the greatest beneficiary of all, of this new enslavement economy – the king, whose wealth and power sustains the myth of the perfect and powerful nation even while its people suffer and die.
The system is so entrenched that there comes a time when there is no need to hide the rampant corruption behind even an appearance of justice. Political leaders know they are so powerful they can get away with whatever they want.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Micah laments then and Micah laments now:
“Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance… Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, ‘Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.’” (Micah 2:1-2. 3:9-11)
The rich get richer by making the poor poorer … all the while claiming they are making the nation great again and that God is on their side.
The killers in high places say their prayers out loud. And they bring before God their perfect offering. The offering that will show God how great they are.
Thousands of rams stolen from the poor in tribute.
Ten thousand rivers of oil the people are forced to grow while their families starve.
They pray, “God, receive this offering of our perfection as the greatest nation in the world!”
And God’s response to their prayers is … deep, deep lament.
God laments: “Do you think the anguished cries of my children are a choir sweet to my ears?”
God cries in agony: “I brought you out of enslavement for freedom.… and now you have enslaved one another!”
There is a gift when things are so broken, we can no longer pretend they are whole.
When we call enslavement … freedom.
When we call suffering … prosperity.
When we call corruption … justice.
When we call lies … the truth.
There is a gift when things are so broken, we can no longer pretend they are whole.
Because then we can admit they have been broken for a long time. Then we can admit we have been broken for a long time.
And we can feel the healing power of the grief of all that has been lost. We can feel the healing power of the rage that this isn’t how it is supposed to be.
There is a gift to knowing we are broken, because then we can begin to heal.
Because brokenness is nothing to fear.
It’s how the light gets in.
It’s going on 3,000 years since Micah wrote these words and yet they could be an Op-Ed in this morning’s Times.
Micah reminds us that the courtroom drama taking place in the well of the Senate is but a proxy for a greater and more ancient trial, where the courtroom is the mountains and the hills, the oceans and the streams.
Where God is the plaintiff on behalf of the most vulnerable among us – including the very creation itself.
Where the accused is not just a president who would be king, because our brokenness did not just happen in the last three and a half years. The accused is the nation.
God is always the plaintiff, the nation is always the accused, the plea is always on behalf of the poor and vulnerable. And … the charge against the nation is always “Why have you enslaved one another?” All this has happened before.
Our current battle over impeachment is nothing new. It is the human struggle with our own brokenness that has endured throughout history. The choices every civilization and community makes.
Will we fragment one from another as we hoard … or will we rejoice together that God provides enough if we share?
Will the few prosper at the expense of the many … or will we welcome the stranger and care for the refugee and orphan?
Will we enslave each other, incarcerate each other, find new ways to re-forge ancient shackles. Or will hold each other, defend each other, care for each other, love each other, knowing that our deepest joy is that God binds us each to the other?
Micah reminds us that impeachment, however justified, is really our seeking of a sacrificial atonement for the sins of the nation. A quid pro quo that would allow us to preserve our vision of ourselves as a perfect and exceptional land of freedom and justice. And … by itself, it would accomplish very little.
The president is not going to be convicted. Of course, he isn’t. We elected Trump because he is sign and symbol of what we have become. And nations never render judgment unto themselves.
The president is not going to be convicted. … and that is a gift if we are willing to receive it. Because there is a gift when things are so broken, we can no longer pretend they are whole. Because then we can admit they have been broken for a long time. That we have been broken for a long time.
There is a gift to knowing we are broken, because then we can begin to heal.
Do not fear the cracks in our nation, in our church, in ourselves. That’s how the light gets in!
So this week, when the ruling comes down, together let us gaze on those broken pieces.
Let us pick up the broken pieces.
… hold the broken pieces
Together let us grieve the broken pieces.
Together let us admit, at long, long last, that our myths of perfection, of exceptionalism are just that … myths.
And together let us listen once more to the word of God lovingly given to us on the lips of the prophet Micah.
“Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear what ‘good’ is, and what is required from you: simply do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”
Democracy. Freedom, Justice. Love. None of these are dead. All of these live in our hearts.
Democracy. Freedom, Justice. Love. None of these are about the amount of our wealth or the breadth of our power or the height of our monuments. It is our pursuit of those things that enslaves us over and over and over again.
Democracy. Freedom. Justice. Love. They are the light that is shining through the cracks. Shining out of each and every broken piece, all the ways we have divided ourselves from one another, all the ways we are waiting, longing to be fused together again.
“Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear what ‘good’ is, and what is required from you: simply do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”
The Hebrew here makes Micah’s words sing.
Do justice. Justice. Mishpat. Not retribution but restoration. A community committed not to being wealthy but to being one. One people, imperfect, under God, loved just as we are.
And how do we become that?
Love kindness. Kindness. Hesed. Loyalty and intimate devotion. Justice lives as we transform enmity into proximity and hold each other in empathy. Make space for one another’s lives and stories. Bind our futures and fortunes together.
Walk humbly with God. Humbly. Anavah, which means “become poor.” We leave the myth of the palace and walk with the revolutionary Jesus to the streets, the shelters and the internment camps. To the places in each of our hearts where we cry silently and alone.
To heal the brokenness, we have to name the brokenness,
…embrace the brokenness,
…gather at the brokenness
… for it is in the places of deepest brokenness that together we will all be made whole.
As humanity, we have been here before. And God is still with us. God’s faithfulness to us is eternal. God is still with us, lovingly chastising us and yearning to deliver us once again from the enslavement in which we have bound ourselves, the enslavement in which we have bound one another.
We are not hopeless or rudderless.
We have been here before, and we know what to do.
God has already made abundantly clear what good is.
We can no longer pretend this nation isn’t broken.
We can no longer pretend that we aren’t broken.
We asked for signs
The signs were sent:
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah, the widowhood of every government
Signs for all to see.
And together, we can sing with deep conviction:
We can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up a thundercloud
They’re gonna hear from me.
We are broken people of a broken nation. And let that be our cry of liberation. For we have never been more deeply loved as we are by a God who has been through this with us countless times before.
The economy of fear hasn’t won.
The economy of love is just getting restarted.
The myth of the perfect offering has been exposed for the lie it has always been. And we are here to sing that truth.
They’ve summoned up a thundercloud and they’re gonna hear from us.
Mishpat.
Hesed.
Anavah.
Do justice.
Love kindness.
Walk humbly
Embrace our brokenness.
Grieve our brokenness.
Give thanks for our brokenness.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
Remember …. there is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
