Image Broken, Heart Broken - It Matters

Father, how your heart must break.

This morning I woke up to the anguish of more senseless death.  Immediately I felt the weight of the sorrow, the lament of loss, the confusion and frustration of others, and the impending onslaught of vitriol and anger spewing opinion after opinion about whose lives matter most.

My heart broke…it still breaks.

Yet in prayer this morning, I couldn’t get past how much sorrow this must bring you, O God.

You God, the One that has knit each and every person on this earth together in the wombs of their mothers.  You God, the One that refuses to see the color of skin, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, political agenda, ethnic origin, or the job one holds as the primary identifier of our lives, but instead chooses to see us first and foremost as your beloved children. 

How your heart must break when your children lash out against one another.

 

Now Lord, I pray you are prepared for what we will do with these stories.  We will use them.  We will use them to push already established agendas moving to demands for action without pausing for confession and lament.

 

We will use these stories as evidence of your non-existence.

Some will say, “If there is a God how could he let these kinds of things to continually happen?”

Really, Lord.  How foolish we are that we would for a second attempt to pawn these actions of death, brutality, violence, hatred, injustice, and retaliation on to you.  It’s like we’ve learned nothing from our Genesis predecessors.  We like Adam are still pushing off blame on to you as he did in the garden.  We like Cain are still refusing to be our brother’s keeper.  We are responsible.  We are responsible for the hate, fear, anger, and brutality that resides deep in the core of our hearts.

We give space for prejudice to fester.

We justify retaliation.

We incite violence in response to violence as though that is ever the answer.

We expect those that serve and defend to do so on streets filled with dangerous weapons, day after day and night after night, with little pay, little respect, and even less appreciation.

 

We seek to narrowly define our neighbors like the expert in the law in Luke 10 to ensure we call “neighbor” only those that are already most like us, who think like us, who look like us, and who act like us.  This narrow definition gives us permission to make “them” out to be the bad guys and gals.

 

Shame on us, O Lord.  This is not your fault, but our failure.  It is our failure to live into the amazingly high calling to be the Image of God.  We mar, corrupt, and pervert your image leaving you almost indistinguishable in the lives of humanity. 

Lord, some will say, “This is the sign that the end is near.”  Perhaps, I don’t know.  I know this isn’t the first time in history that you’ve witnessed your children destroy one another at alarming rates.  I’m afraid the doomsday prophet is again passing off responsibility.  The desire to escape is a failure to reckon with integrity and faithfulness with the world we live in now.

 

To hope for the end of all things simply means we don’t have to change our attitudes and actions.  It means the world can go to hell in a handbasket and at the last minute you come to swoop down and save the day, leaving us to say, “Thank God, I thought I was going to have to do something there.”

 

And yet when Jesus prayed…

“Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” 

Something about what we do here matters. 

Our attitudes matter. 

The hate, fear, and prejudice in our hearts matter.  Our anger and hatred that produces violence and death matters.  Our inability and unwillingness to change the systemic issues of injustice in our society matters.  Our intolerance and our willingness to stereotype those with whom we disagree matters. 

The lives of the weak and defenseless matters.  The lives of those that stand in defense of the weak and defenseless matters.  The neighbor with whom we have nothing in common matters. 

The rainbow flag waving member of the LGBTQ community matters.

The man who kissed his baby girl on the forehead before leaving his house, shield fixed on his chest believing he’s making a difference for the good, unsure of the danger lurking around every corner matters.

The burqa wearing woman matters.

The hooded black teen matters.

The white family in suburbia matters.

The man who risked his life crossing the border in search of a job to support his family matters.

The suit wearing Baptist standing on the front steps of his church matters.

The mentally ill matter.  The elderly matter.  The orphan matters.  The homeless matter.

 

They all matter!  What we do matters…why?  Because it matters to you!  Because you, O God, see a world you’ve crafted with your own hands and lives you’ve molded to reflect your image run amuck and your heart breaks.  What happens here, what happens to us, what we choose to do to one another matters.

Until we deal decisively with the corruption lingering deep in our hearts, until we are willing to confess our sins, until we stop seeking someone to blame or an escape hatch to get us out of this big bad place, we will be destined to replay the history of brutality and sadness, heartache and violence.  Only once we realize that every seed of prejudice, hate, and unchecked anger planted gives rise to a society that turns on itself and devours itself, will we be positioned to make a difference.

Violence begets violence.

Prejudice begets prejudice.

Hate begets hate.

Blame passes off responsibility.

Lord, teach us to both lament and confess.  Teach us to lament that which breaks your heart, the death of all…because all matter to YOU!  Teach us to confess instead of assigning blame.  Teach us to nurture with great responsibility, sacrifice, and diligence the world as we have it now, so that, perhaps somehow your divine intentions for peace, love, and hope can be glimpsed through our actions of brother keeping and neighbor making.  

Lord have your way with us.