The History of Brokenness Repeats Itself

What’s it like to hold the broken body of Christ right now?

When I saw the Pietà in St. Peter’s for the first time in 2005, I couldn’t look away. The weight of sorrow and tenderness carved into stone held me captive. Michelangelo had somehow managed to sculpt a mother’s grief, and there I was—a jet-lagged Protestant, former Catholic—having a full-blown ecclesiastical crisis. Not a crisis of faith in God, but in the Church in her unresurrected condition.

In my mind, my beautiful friend and once-upon-a-time spiritual director, Adele, was beside me, gently inviting me—yet again—to hold the broken body of Christ. Not in marble, but in the life of the Church. The problem? The Church felt beyond repair. Her wounds were gaping, her death seemed imminent, and resurrection was nowhere in sight.

The history of brokenness repeats itself.

“Can this brutalized body of Christ live?” I wondered. And like the prophet Ezekiel staring at a valley of dry bones, I could only mutter, “Only you know, O God.” Which, if we’re honest, is the biblical equivalent of, “I have absolutely no idea, and I’d love some divine intervention about now.”

I started questioning my place as a pastor. Could I keep doing this work when I had more questions than answers? The certainty of my younger pastoral self had faded, replaced by a love for the God who remains Mystery—for Christ who, let’s be real, asks more questions than He ever answers.

A few years later, in another moment of raw honesty and exhaustion, I told my peer supervision group I wasn’t sure I could keep pastoring the way I once did. Their response?

“Well… maybe the Church doesn’t need another pastor with all the answers. Maybe it needs a spiritual director with beautiful questions.”

Huh. Touché.

Every pastor is called to forget the former ways, or as the prophet Isaiah would say, “Behold, I am doing a new thing.” To say the Church (capital C) always needs death, burial, and resurrection is to state the obvious. But to say we need a new thing when the Church’s body has been misused by political pundits and religious tyrants? Understatement of the year.

The history of brokenness repeats itself. But so does resurrection.

We must let go of the former things if we are to be a resurrected presence in each moment of history.

So, what do you think? What do you need to let go of personally to be a resurrected presence in the world? What hard, fast answers are unhelpful and outdated? What beautiful questions might help us make way for all things new?

Asking for a friend. <3

__________________________________________________________

You can join us in June for 4-days of –
“Behold, I am doing a new thing” with the Enneagram Harmony Model.

_____________________________________________________

Love God, Neighbor and Self . Sharpen personal and professional skills with the Enneagram here.