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This sermon text is Psalm 51:18, and the lectionary week is Ash Wednesday C.

GOD’S LOVE BREAKS THROUGH WHEN HEARTS ARE BROKEN TEARFULLY - Ash Wednesday (3/1/1995)

Psalm 51:18 Ash Wednesday (3/1/95)

GOD’S LOVE BREAKS THROUGH WHEN HEARTS ARE BROKEN TEARFULLY

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace…..

“God uses for his glory those people and things that are most perfectly broken.” This is the theme of our lenten worship today and in the weeks to come. God has used all sorts of broken things, and still uses them. The brokenness that I want to talk about today comes from the first reading in our service, Psalm 51: “The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

This is an appropriate time, at the beginning of this season of rnewal, to confess to God that our sins are the cause of our Savior’s great sacrifice. If we come to God with excuses, God will see through them. If we approach God with our own good works, God will declare them not good enough or numerous enough. The Bible says: “All our righteousness is like filthy rags.” I heard one preacher say that it is hard to talk about ashes on Ash Wednesday….lots of people don’t know what it is to carry out ashes and spread them on the garden, or to use them for making soap. It might be more useful to add a ‘Tr…’ and call it Trash Wednesday. Most of us know what a hassle it is to deal with trash every week. Trash is that stuff that builds up and takes over our house or garage or yard, if we don’t deal with it. Lent is a time when we say to God, “Our best intentions have turned to trash, and things are out of our control.” All we can offer to God is our broken lives. And here is where we hear the good news that God accepts and uses what is most perfectly broken.

In the sight of God, brokenness is necessary for renewal to take place. Scripture is filled with God using broken things for renewal. Think of the little band of soldiers that Gideon led against the Midianites. Each soldier was given a pitcher, a clay pot. What were they to do with them in order to win the victory. Break them! It was the crashing sound of that braking that helped strike terror in the hearts of the enemy (Psychological warfare.) When Jesus fed the 5,000 with five barley lovaves and two small fish one boy had brought for his lunch. He gave his lunch to Jesus, and Jesus prayed, and then what did he do?…he broke the bread and fish. When the food was broken, something new and dramatic happenned. Even Christ himself was used for God’s glory when he was broken. His skin was broken by the thorns, by the nails, by the spear. His lifeblood was poured out for us. Whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we break bread at this command and share in his feast….a meal where brokenness heals and saves.

This lent I ask you to thing about being broken. In order that God’s love might break through, during this season let’s be conscious of offering God our broken spirits, our broken and contrite hearts. And these hearts need to be broken in a special way. Most of us know another kind of broken heart, the one that has faced sorrow and disappointment of this world. In the movie, Wizard of Oz, the tim man is told that he shouldn’t complain about not having a heart. The wizard tells him “Hearts are impractical until they can be made unbreakable.” Most of us have experienced this in our lives, and some of us are going through the breaking of our hearts by this world right now. Our hearts break with sadness when things don’t go as we planned, with grief over the death of a loved one…or when a family member disappoints us. The Word of God assures us that things are not hopeless for the person whose heart is breaking like this. Someone has said, “It is beautiful to see what God can do with a broken heart when he has all the pieces.” Everyone whose heart is breaking out of sorrow is invited to take all the pieces to the lord for him to heal, restore, strengthen and renew. The Lord can be trusted, his promises never fail.

But when the psalm says, “A broken and contrite heart God will nto despise,” it is talking about a different kind of broken heart, the kind that is touched by another kind of sorrow and grief. The breaking heart that the psalm refers to is a heart that recognizes its own sinfulness. Such a heart is pliable to the Word of God, eagerly listening to what the Lord has to say.

Actually, it is not we who do the breaking of our hearts. It is God’s word wheich commands the good and condemns the bad. Then we look at our lives, and we have to confess that we have not lived up to God’s expectations. The broken heart cries out, “Lord, I’ve done it again. I’ve tried only to say good and helpful things, but I’ve opened my heart for evil again. I’ve tried to thing positive and helpful thaoughts, but I’ve often been negaitve and destructive. I’ve not put first things first. I’ve not forgiven others when they ask for forgiveness.” We have failed and we realize that we cannot correct the problem by ourselves. No wonder Paul says, “O wretch that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”

That is the broken and contrite heart that God does not despise. Ash Wednesday is an important time to let God’s word break our hearts. Ashes are the symbol of sorrow, the sign that we understand and admit how weak we are. We are dust and to dust we will return. We are broken people, who sorrow over our sin.

Normally we dislike what is broken, but God is not like us. He looks with favor on our brokenness and repentance. He welcomes our broken hearts. It’s amazing what God can do with all the pieces!

That is how we come to the Lord’s table…every time we come. We cannot come with arrogance or pride. We bring instead an awareness of our sins, knowing that we are not able to atone for them ourselves. We trust that Jesus Christ has paid the price for every one of our sins…his death was sufficient. His broken body and spilled blood are able to heal and renew us. In Jesus Christ, God puts all the pieces of our broken hearts back together again….as only a loving Creator can.

My point today is this: although our broken and contrite hearts do not make payment for our sins, God will not overlook or refuse, or reject the heart that is broken and contride. He does not ‘despise’ such a heart—we have God’s promise on that. God tells us, “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. My hand made all these things. But to this one I will look, to the one who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at my word.”

In lowliness we bow before him, then, as again and again he answers the lenten question “Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my sov’reign die? Would he devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?” The answer is “YES!” Christ says “Yes, I was broken for you, that the Father’s love might break through.” God loves us that much, that he would experience such brokenness for us, and indeed in Christ God has been perfectly broken, that we might be saved.”