March 7, 2021
Matthew 9: 27-33
27 As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, crying loudly, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” 28 When he entered the house, the blind men came to him; and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” 29 Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you.” 30 And their eyes were opened. Then Jesus sternly ordered them, “See that no one knows of this.” 31 But they went away and spread the news about him throughout that district.
32 After they had gone away, a demoniac who was mute was brought to him. 33 And when the demon had been cast out, the one who had been mute spoke; and the crowds were amazed and said, “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel.”
Broken and Beautiful is the name of a Kelly Clarkson song. I heard it recently and it caught my attention. The chorus goes, “I’m broken and it’s beautiful.” She repeats that so many times. She also shares her strength, as she often does, but then shares,
“We’re walking on the ocean, turning water into wine,
We bury our emotion and pretend that we’re just fine.”
The video has her young daughter with her backstage before a show, then Clarkson powerfully singing to all the world, “I’m broken and it’s beautiful!”
The song got me thinking about how many of us can say that out loud. How many can say, “We are broken, we are human, we have cracked bits that need God’s grace and all of it, all of me, is beautiful?”
The idea of sea glass as something broken, then finding its beauty, is an image we can relate to.
As you know during Lent, we have been exploring Jesus’ miracles in Matthew’s gospel starting with physical and community brokenness and our need for healing. We have looked at our physical wounds, and our community failings and God’s healing being asked for both. Today we are looking at our emotional brokenness. This can be mental illness as well as our own emotional patterns. After a year in lock down, I think we can all see a few more cracks in our emotional health. And rightly so. This has been a trying year for all of us. Maybe if we all can admit that we have less than a perfect state of mind then we might find more grace and healing.
Jesus heals three people in this week’s passage; two blind men and a mute person, maybe a woman, the text does not say. We know little about them, save for their disabilities. The blind men do have faith. They believe Jesus able to show mercy. For that is what they ask of him. Mercy is a way of showing kindness for their need, and Jesus certainly does that. He heals them of their blindness. But what if their need was not physical blindness, but rather emotional blindness? Bible scholars muse about blindness being a metaphor for spiritual blindness, especially for the religious leaders who just could not see Jesus for who he was. I think we can be blind to some of our own patterns in life that hinder our ability to see who we are and what we do. For that matter what if the mercy Jesus shows, could also be about our inability to speak up, because something has made us mute?
Blindness and not being able to speak can be considered disabilities. Kathleen O’Connor coined the term “temporarily abled” as an inclusive way of speaking about all of us, rather than saying that some people are disabled. We are all disabled from something. We all have parts of us that don’t work, especially on the emotional level. And we all are broken and beautiful.
Ann Landers the renowned columnist wrote, “Do you realize that one in every four Americans is unbalanced? Think of your three closest friends. If they seem OK, you’re the one! (Sermons.com) You gotta love Ann. I say that to lighten the mood, because it can be hard to look at ourselves in this way. Yet I believe the healing Jesus does for us today can be as much about our emotional blindness and in ability to speak as it was the physical miracles of restoring sight and speech.
Jesus gave three people the ability to see and to speak. So I ask, what are you blind to today? What do you need to say? We will look at this through two lenses the lens of mental health and the lens of mental patterns.
Mental health can mean so many things, emotionally balanced, honesty with oneself, forming healthy relationships. But when cracks appear, we start talking about stress, anxiety, depression, fear. I wish we could rid ourselves of the stigma about these, so that we can speak out more freely when we experience them. Because we all do, at different times in our lives. The danger comes when we are silent in our emotional pain. Maya Angelou wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Speaking truth, your truth is healing. The Me Too Movement marked the beginning of the end of women being made mute by abusive men. Moreover, your story can often help to heal another on their journey of recovery. Just think of a time of grief and how speaking with someone who knew grief helped you to walk through your own. The Twelve Step recovery program shares their common weakness with alcohol, drugs or food as a path to surrendering to a new way of being, with God’s help. Blindness to their addiction is removed and they find their voice in helping others to recover. Trying to practice what I am preaching; I will share that this month I have been in recovery from food addiction for 34 years. Practicing the Twelve steps has been a way of smoothing the edges of my broken sea glass and helping me to find the beauty within.
Our own mental patterns can also blind us to ourselves. Sue Monk Kidd tells of several patterns, archetypes, we use to hide from our own truth. Tinsel Star pours herself into a long line of praise worthy accomplishments. She’s the overachiever in us, the perfectionist, the performer whose outer radiance often covers an inner insecurity” (When the Heart Waits, p.61). Tinsel Star is one way we hide from our true self. Or how about the Tin Woodsman who has cut himself off from his emotions. Like in the Wizard of Oz, the Tin man didn’t have a heart. “Many of us have learned to be afraid of the feelings inside ourselves. Perhaps when we risked expressing them, we met with astonishment and admonishment, which led to embarrassment and vulnerability” (p. 68). So we hide our true feelings. We became blinded and mute to our feelings. Or maybe you relate to the Little Red Hen who did it all! You remember the story, she cooked, washed, raked and mowed and asked for help but everyone said “not I.” I remember my mother joking around by putting a an “M” on her forehead meaning martyr with all that she did for the family. I think that was a common experience. But at the end of the story the hen is no longer a mute martyr, she finds her voice and values herself. Kidd writes, “The Bible summons us to self-love as well as other-love: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt. 22:39). How are we ever going to truly love others if we don’t cultivate self-love?” (p. 66). Part of finding the beauty within ourselves is by being truthful with who we are and how we feel. Taking the blinders off the patterns we live and speaking our truth into the world. As Kidd writes, in so doing we are birthing our “True Self, the Christ-life, in communion with the whole of ourselves” (p. 70). “In naming the many patterns of our false selves, we “bend down to the broken, horrible faces in ourselves and kiss each one. That’s the necessary act. For in such tender but powerful acts of self-communion, we make way for the true seed to break through the folds of darkness. Only by confronting the false selves and embracing them can we liberate the True Self”(p.73).
You are broken and you are beautiful! God created you that way. Jesus gave us the act of communion to be healed of our blindness and our inability to speak. Jesus gave us communion to seek out our true self in Christ’s grace and love. Jesus gives us mercy, kindness for our brokenness. Do you believe it is possible? As we share Christ’s table may we clearly see our brokenness and our beauty, as God’s precious children. Amen.
