“Cracks that Don’t Need Filling”

Date:  October 4, 2009

Script:  Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

Revd William F. Meier    ~   First United Methodist Church, Saint Cloud, Minnesota

__________________________________________________________________

                                       A FATHER AND SON STANDING

                                                                 AT THE RUINS

My old man never wanted much.

He wouldn’t ask me to take him anywhere.

His motto was, “Don’t go to any trouble for me.”

The Sunday drive was my idea,

but I began to think I’d made a mistake

bringing him to the farm where he was born.

Scanning the yard, he said,

“Not much left worth looking at.”

We found a padlock on the door

of the farmhouse.  Trying to see inside,

I parted the six-foot sunflowers

and cupped my hands around my eyes,

peering through a dark window.

“Can you see anything?” he said.

I made space for him, and we stood

a long time, looking into an empty room.

“I remember that crack,” he said,

“down there in the baseboard.”

Back in town, when I took his hand

and helped him stand up from the car,

he laughed— as if we were partners

in a joke.  “Well,” he said,

“we went a long way to see a crack.”

C Leo Dangel

Have you ever tried to bring about a magical or perfect moment?  The perfect holiday, the perfect romantic evening, the perfect religious experience, the perfect wedding, the perfect dinner?  We know the ingredients, we can orchestrate the elements, we can plan and practically bring it about by the force of sheer will, but sometimes the harder we try, the further the goal seems to be.  “We went a long way to see a crack.” 

Yet, standing by that car, father and son wind up swirling in the magic as they share a joke together— and laugh.  They drive miles to find that intimate moment that only arrives when they stand by the car together back home.  That meaningless crack in the baseboard (and in his brain cells for all those years) now becomes the joke and the communion of father and son. 

The insignificant, the absurd, the mundane can become a gateway to the sacred.  The incarnation and the crack in the baseboard tells us that it is all special... every place... every time... every memory... every person... every creature. 

Jesus came up out of the river Jordan and understood fully the sacredness of his life—his own sweet belovedness before God.   He lived and taught out of that belovedness.  Toward the end, Jesus lifted up the common staples of the day—the coffee and doughnuts— and said that whatever might happen to him in the next few days would not erase the connection they felt around that table.

We do our best to orchestrate, plan, and coerce into reality magical and perfect moments when we gather around the table here... when we baptize someone.  We do our best to make it special.  Sometimes we feel it, and other times we don’t.  The cracks in our own lives keep coming through.  The pastor stumbles on the words... the baby screams into the microphone. 

Yet, what makes Communion special is not our orchestrations, performance, words, or rituals... it is the cracks — of bread and wine, the cracks of you and me in our mundane and broken lives remembering together— sharing together— a life that brings us hope, love, courage, joy and launches us into such a life ourselves.

What makes a Baptism special is the sweet flesh that we take in our arms and welcome with a love that joins God’s love and proclaim that the child is beloved, with whom we are more than pleased... we laugh with joy born in a common joke, and find the real presence of Christ among us.

Cracks.  We always think we need to fill them in— baseboards, or in our souls.  Yet cracks allow the light of Christ through, revealing a sacredness that blazes all around us.  The cracks in our souls leave us with a hunger and restlessness for God.