Let’s Fall to Pieces Together
Luke 22:39-46
January 22, 2006
There is a medium sized city in Indiana which has a Methodist Church in the heart of the downtown area. Members of the church include some of the leaders of the community: Business owners, entrepreneurs, city politicians, doctors, lawyers, and bankers. There is a significant amount of wealth among church members, which really isn’t surprising given the sort of folks that attend. Blue collar workers in the church were fairly rare, but even most of those men and women worked in industries which provided them with fairly high paying jobs.
There was one family that certainly, on the surface, looked out of place. I never quite understood – until much later – why they attended there or why they felt comfortable there. But then I began to watch God move in their lives and the lives of church members. When I saw what God was doing, then I understood.
One day, the mother was arrested for writing bad checks. This had become a habit for her and the local bank had tired of covering her lapses in judgment. The next Sunday, the whole family was back in church, sitting in their regular pew, as if nothing had changed. In fact, there were some things that had indeed not changed.
They were still part of the church family. No one ignored them, or look crossways at them, or snickered behind their backs, or gossiped about them. People in the church, for the most part, acted as if nothing happened.
But some things had changed. Some of the leaders in the church began to look at this family with new eyes. They looked at them and saw, not a family that didn’t belong, but a family in crisis. They saw members of their own church who were down and out. They were not satisfied to leave them there.
Very quietly, a banker and a lawyer began to work with them. They were honest with them about their pattern of lies, mistakes, and sins, but offered to do what they could to help them get back on their feet. They helped mom and dad solve their legal problems, assisted them to be more careful in the budgeting of their expenses, and taught them new skills to manage their lives.
In that process, God took on a real face. Actually, come to think of it, God took on a number of different faces of both men and women who modeled care, compassion, wisdom, and tough love.
Now here’s the rest of the story. Years later, both sons have graduated from college and are embarking on a road to ordained ministry. The daughter has fulfilled her dream of becoming an elementary teacher, and has a husband and babies of her own. Dad still works at the same job where he is a loyal and important employee. Mom has become a lay pastor and shepherds a small rural church. God truly made himself known in that church through the ways that they banded together to help one of their own. In those actions, the church became the church as it is meant to be.
Over the years, and much to my surprise, I have become somewhat of a country music fan. I used to make fun of country music because of all the songs about dogs, pickup trucks, and the women that got away…or maybe it is the women, pickup trucks, and the dogs that got away. But anyway, I surprised myself last Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told her that I thought I might like to receive an Alan Jackson CD.
I did, in fact, pray for Alan Jackson one day. Not in person, mind you, but with an elderly woman from I church I served. She loved Alan Jackson and had an 8 X 10 autographed picture of him on her coffee table. As I left her house that day, I didn’t feel quite right praying for her and not for Alan.
George Strait has one of those classic country songs about losing his woman and then trying to drown his sorrow in what the Indigo Girls call “a bottle of possibility.” By coincidence, there in the bar he finds a woman who is going through the same thing. She has just been jilted by her lover.
George understands and sings, “Let’s fall to Pieces together. Why should we both fall apart? Let’s fall to pieces together, right here in each other’s arms.” Isn’t that poetic? It really tugs at your heartstrings, doesn’t it?
The more I thought about that, the more I thought that I ought to ask the choir to sing it for the anthem today, but I couldn’t find the sheet music. I thought we ought to sing it, because I think it is perfect pictures of what the church is suppose to be all about.
Every single one of us in this room today has fallen to pieces at some time or other. If we haven’t, we are lucky, and can rest assured that it will happen to us in the future. I don’t know a better way to survive those times than to fall to pieces together, so that we can love each other through the tough times.
I’m reading a book now titled, “Why Men Hate to Come to Church.” The author says that one of the reasons men don’t come to church is because we use all of this feminine language. We talk about love and relationships and stuff like that, and that is not where men are. He said that women’s religion is Christianity and men’s religion is masculinity.
Men, for the most part, he says, aren’t in to all of this “touchy-feely” stuff. It’s kind of like when our wives say that they just want to cuddle on the couch and talk. We’d rather be in the garage with an adult beverage, hunched over a ’68 Chevy small block V8.
To be honest with you, I am only on chapter 4 of this book and so don’t know the whole story. I may not completely understand what this guy is saying. But I’m struggling with how to present the gospel message without using these sorts of images.
I firmly believe that we desperately need each other. I believe that God comes fully alive in our midst when we imitate God’s capacity to love each other fully, to love even those of us who are unlovely at times.
The lesson this morning comes from Jesus. It is part of the Passion story. You remember, don’t you, that when the Last Supper was over, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him, across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane. There were men who had walked with him through all of the years of his ministry. They shared the ground with him as their bed and the open sky as the roof over their heads. They walked the dusty roads together, never knowing whether blessing or danger waited around the next corner.
They laughed together and cried together. They prayed and worshipped together. They ministered in the name of God together. They were brothers and family in the truest sense of the word.
I want to remind you this morning about some of the things we know about Jesus. Those who grew up in the church learned all these things in Sunday School. One of the cornerstones on our church doctrine is that Jesus was both divine and human. In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the Evangelist proclaims that the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.
The Apostle Paul announces the qualities of Jesus when he writes to the Philippians.
…though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).
Perhaps, nowhere is Christ’s humanity more visible than on the Mount of Olives that night when he was betrayed. He was in agony, clearly at odds with God. He wanted the coming trials to be passed over. He wanted and was willing to do God’s will, but would have preferred to do it some other way. He was in so much anguish that he sweat blood.
I always thought that this was an exaggeration by the writer of the gospel, which was simply added for effect. But I looked through one of Toni’s old nursing books and found a condition called “hematidrosis.” It causes blood to actually seep from the pours of the skin. Severe mental anguish, of a kind that few of us have ever experienced, can be a trigger.
This tells me that the human Jesus was so close to mental and physical breakdown that his blood mixed with his sweat and flowed down his face. The human Jesus knew the struggle of the will. He knew the pain of loneliness, rejection, abandonment, and betrayal.
What was his wish at this time? He needed his disciples. He needed his family. He needed those who cared for him most. He needed not to be left alone in his time of trial. If he didn’t need the presence of his friends to give him strength, he would have left them back in Jerusalem, but he made it a point to take them with him.
Earlier, they had promised to share the cup between them; a Jewish expression which meant that they would commit themselves to share each other’s fate. The disciples may have forgotten their pledge, but Jesus hadn’t. He needed them that night as he walked through the fire.
Just the same, we need each other. I can guarantee that everyone here, at one time or another, is going to need the counsel, the wisdom, the correction, the discipline, or just the presence of the rest of the family.
Perhaps tragedy will strike us. Perhaps we will become victims of our own sinfulness. Perhaps illness will threaten our lives. Perhaps depression will saw our strength and our will to live. When those times come and those things happen, we will not survive unless we gather around each other to comfort, support, and love.
I can also guarantee that when people are changed and saved because of this family who chooses to love them completely, then we will see the face of God who still performs miracles, and love even us, the unlovable. God is alive in our midst when we walk the journey together. If you have to fall to pieces, this is a good place to do it. Here, we can fall to pieces together.
