Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 07/04/21 "Ruined"

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Homily from the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The beauty is in the broken. Too often, when we encounter our own brokenness and woundedness, we either pretend it isn’t there or we just want it to be taken away. But surrendered to God, our weakness is more than replaced and more than erased, they are redeemed. Mass Readings from July 4, 2021: Ezekiel 2:2-5 Psalms 123:1-42 Corinthians 12:7-10 Mark 6:1-6

So I've noticed something about our culture that maybe you've noticed this too. It's one of those things where, you know, when something gets old or when something gets scratched, it gets dinged up, it gets banged up, it gets broken, we don't really, in our culture, we don't really fix it. We just replace it. I don't know if you, have you noticed this, this kind of a, this phenomenon we have. We can be so quick to say, like, if something gets kind of broken or something gets, again, scratched or banged up, we just say, well, it's ruined.

I need a new one. And I think about that, in light of your country. contrasting like previous generations, other generations that would simply, they'd just fix it, they'd repair it. But we have this replacement mentality, this idea that if something isn't new or even like new, then it's ruined. I mean, in fact, I remember hearing about a man years ago who, whenever he bought a new car, one of the things he would intentionally do, because he would intentionally, in the first week of owning his car, he'd take his car key and he would intentionally scratch the outside of his car because he just wanted to

to remind himself that damaged does not mean ruined. Because we can so easily buy into that idea, the damage just means ruin. In fact, when I was 16 or 17 years old, it was maybe a weekend like this, and we had a bunch of family visiting. My uncle was up with his family, and he had a very nice, very new suburban.

And I was backing out of the driveway, and I might have scratched his car on the way out. And, oh, man, my gut fell. Like, I was just like, oh, my gosh. I know I have to tell him. So I went back into the house, and I was like, oh, Uncle Tim, I scratched your car, and he's like, okay, we'll check it out. And I was thinking, he was going to have some point going to rip my head off,

and he just said, we'll check it out. And we walk out there and he sees the scratch. And that's it. He said, that's okay. He said, that's what happens. Remember thinking, like, that's what happens when I have an irresponsibly a moronic bad driver for a nephew? Or, like, he's like, no, that's what happens. Like, that's what life does.

That's just what, that's what happens. And the same thing is true for us. right as we go through life we what do we end up we we end up with our own cracks and our chips and scratches and dents and we get broken and realize all of us i mean if you live long enough you realize at some point that's just what happens that's what life does life bangs you up just living in this world that's what happens it scratches you up just living in this world you get broken and so the big question is not what happens the big question is what do we do when that happens. Like when it comes to our own dents, when it comes to our own scratches, when it comes to

our own the chips and dings and the real even significant brokenness, when what do we do when we are no longer new? Like what do we do when we believe that we're ruined? I think most of us we do one of two things. I think the first thing we might do is we're, we hide, right? We're just tempted to pretend, to ignore, to just kind of live as if it's what we call impression management? Where you just kind of like you hide these scratches, you hide these dents, you hide the broken, the idea that if they don't see it, it doesn't exist. And so we just spend so much of our lives trying to present an image to other people and

then manage that image. It's the impression management kind of idea. Because if I can cultivate an image of myself without the brokenness, without the cracks, without the wounds, then I'll be okay. And of course we realize after like, you know, a day that's exhausting. But still we try to do it or we do this. We either pretend or we try to replace. And we try to live as if the broken never happened.

I don't know if you've ever found yourself doing this, where just say, I just, I want to be back to before, right? Back to before it was broken. Back to before it was cracked. Back before I failed. I want to get back to before we lost. I just want to get back to before we were ruined. And we can say that our whole prayer just amounts to this. I just want it gone.

I just want this gone. You know what St. Paul in the second reading today? 2 Corinthians chapter 12 St. Paul. He has this thing. He calls that a thorn in the flesh. We don't know what it is. Babbel scholars, they don't know. They think it could be a physical ailment. He had some problem with his eyes.

Some people say it's a person, like someone in his life was his thorn in his flesh. Maybe you can identify, relate with that. It could have been also a deeper, like, emotional or like spiritual temptation or spiritual wound, a spiritual weakness. But whatever it was, one thing is absolutely certain. St. Paul wanted it gone. Like one thing is completely clear. He hated it and he wanted it gone.

I mean, he even says, he says, three times I begged the Lord to take this from me. It's just, you've ever been there? You know a place where you say like, okay, Lord, here's the tale. All I need, like all I want. I just need this one thing. Like take this away and then I'll be whole.

Like take this away, then I'll be happy. Take this away and then it'll be new. If you just, God, just take this away and then I'll be not ruined. That's all I need. So for the last four months, for weeks, I mean, we've been talking about this guy named Tobit. Tobit, you can find his story in the book of Tobit,

which is super convenient for us to remember. Like Tobit, okay, book of Tobit. And Tobit, his part of his story is, he's a Jewish man, and he's living in the north part of Israel. But at one point, the kingdom of Israel like ten tribes in the north called the Kingdom of Israel, and two tribes in the South called the Kingdom of Judah. And so here is Tobit.

He has to hike all the way down to Jerusalem with his wife, with his son, to worship God. But then it gets even worse, where there's this king named Shamanassar. It's not going to be a test, don't worry about it. Sheminazar is the king of Assyria, and he comes down, and he basically takes all those people in the north, and he exiles them, and he takes Tobit and his wife and his son,

and he exiles them to the city of Nineveh. And part of Tobit's prayer is, God, I can't even go to your temple. I can't even worship you. I can't even make your name known. Part of his prayer is this idea of, like, God, just fix this one thing. Just take care of this one thing,

this one great pain of my life, and let me go back to Jerusalem, be back among my people, among your people, God. And then what will happen is this, then your name will be praised, and then your name will be known, and then you'll be great again. Because Tobit knows God can do that, right?

Tobit knows that God can do miracles. I mean, honestly, the gospel today. Jesus can heal. Sometimes that's part of the problem, right? We know this. We know that Jesus can heal. He can heal anything, but there are times that he doesn't.

Jesus can heal, but there are times when he doesn't replace, then he, when he doesn't restore, Jesus can heal, but there are times when he does something else, and what he does is this, he doesn't make us new by taking away the cracks, but by keeping them and entering into them. So often we're talking, God, take away the cracks, take away the broken.

Sometimes he doesn't make us new by taking away the cracks. Sometimes he makes us new by keeping them and entering, not by hiding the brokenness, but by highlighting his presence in the brokenness. So like 400 plus years ago in Japan, there was this man who was pretty powerful. He was a Shogun in Japan. If you know what that is, that's awesome. Tell me afterwards.

But he was powerful and he was wealthy. And he had his favorite tea bowl, which is like a bowl you drink tea out of. For those of you who are confused by my technical use of the word tea bowl. So you have this favorite tea bowl. And at one point, he bought it from China, this special incredible bowl. That's where we get all our stuff now. But at the time, it was kind of a new thing. And the tea bowl cracked.

And so he sent it back to China, and he wanted it fixed. And they sent it back, and they had stapled it together. It was this weird, like, it was ugly. It was bad, broken, it was worse fixed. And so he sent outward to all the artisans near him, said, who can fix this tea bowl? And what some of those artists came up with was they did this thing where they took this lacquer resin, and they ground gold into a powder. And they mixed that gold powder into the resin.

and that's what they used to fix the bowl. So you'd stick the pieces back to each other with this golden resin. And so when they presented this, his favorite bowl back to him, what he saw was, and it's crazy, they didn't make the cracks go away. They highlighted the cracks with gold.

They didn't make it look like it never been broken. They emphasized the fact, this had been broken, and now this has been restored in a way that is not like new. It is better than what it was before. It's not replaced. It's not restored.

It's not even like, quote, unquote, perfectly new. It was something beyond perfection, something maybe a little bit more like power made perfect in weakness. Because I think so often we want people to look at us and say, wow, look at how strong he is. Like, look at how brave she is. Look at how beautiful she is. Look how holy they are.

We just want people to look at us and see all the shininess. You know, again, the whole idea of like I want to either hide or pretend or replace. But the Christian, like we as disciples of Jesus, we get to say, we don't have to say, look at my wholeness and my holiness. We get to say, look at what God has done in my weakness. Without taking away my weakness. Look at what God has done in me in my weakness. So years ago, we have this, we have a, I work at the University of Minnesota Duluth,

and we have a women's household on campus. Years ago, a number of the women in this household, they had a devotion to St. Catherine of Sian. St. Catherine of Sienna, this incredible, incredible saint. I think she died at like maybe 31 years old. She's a doctor of the church, like super saint, basically, right? So all these women in this household loved Catherine of Sienna, and at one point they had this massive crisis

because they had read this book that, they read this book that had no evidence and no proof of this, no thing to suggest this, but they just had someone had a wild hair and they said, what about this? What if Catherine of Sienna, because she would fast a lot, right? And she died really young. So the idea in this book, without any evidence, again, just keep this in mind, they said, you know, the reason why St.

Athena Fasset so much is because she actually had an eating disorder. And that eating disorder led to her early death. And so these women, like, they called me and like, You, Father, you have to go over here now. We need to talk about this now. I'm like, what's going on? We read a book. Okay.

But then they unpacked this because they were like really shook up about this. Maybe this woman that we thought was like our hero. Maybe she wasn't so heroic. Maybe what caused her early death was actually a weakness, a wound. was this disease. What do we do about this? And I was like, I don't know, I don't know. I'll ask somebody.

So I have this spiritual director who is this old, old man, who's a hermit. He's a priest who's a hermit in northern Minnesota. I'm visiting him as like visiting Gandalf. So I drive through the woods and Father Gandalf's out in this front porch. Like, come, come, you know, I'm like, okay. So I ask him, I say, Father, tell him the whole story. Like, what about this? What if the case is that not that Catherine Sienna was so holy, but that she was just hurting?

And that's what caused her early death. And Father looked at me and said, as so? Like so, you know, that she's just, she's not holy, she's just broken. And he's like, no, no, no, listen, listen. God can make you holy, even if he doesn't make you whole.

In fact, again, there's no evidence for this. There's no evidence for this that Catherine Santa had this wound, this particular wound. Just want to keep that in mind. But he said, even if she did, what it highlights is not her goodness. It highlights God's power. The fact that God can make her into one of the,

most incredible saints, whoever walked the face of the earth, and she even died broken, but died a saint. Because sometimes the presence of wounds highlights God's love even more than the absence of wounds. I mean, look at a new bowl. That's nice.

Look at a replaced bowl, a bowl with no cracks. Those things are all really nice, but they're just ordinary bowls. But to allow the weakness to remain, to allow the brokenness to be there, but to be there redeemed, to see a once ruined bowl made more than new, not by being placed or by the cracks being erased, but by the cracks being redeemed.

Like that's something else. That's something we've never seen. It was nice and now it's beautiful. And the beauty is in the broken. It was nice, but now it's something more. It's beautiful. And the beauty is in the broken. That brokenness, and here's what we have to do, because we all have the broken.

We all have those cracks. it's that brokenness that surrendered to God. What I mean by that is we just make the decision to give God access to it. Because every single person in this church we have our church face on, I see it right now, you guys, great church faces, awesome. You know, the Sunday mask, not the ones we wore, but now the ones we wear. Like the church face that's like, no, I'm fine, I'm good. I don't know why these people, these knuckleheads over here are acting up. Like, I am completely, no, we are all so broken.

And what do we do with that broken? We don't run from it. You don't hide from it. We don't pretend that it's not there. We just say, God, you have access to it. We surrender it. And what does he do? He redeems it.

The miracle can be seen in the fact that what was once ruined is now redeemed. So it was just, well, used to just be my wounds or my weakness or the proof of my brokenness. Like when we surrender, when he give God access to them, they're now so much more. They used to be my wounds, but now they're evidence of his power. They used to be my weakness, but now they're proof of his greatness. What used to be a proof of my brokenness is now a proof of his love because the reality is once you would

look at me and you just see failure once people would just look at you and they just see cracks but now they can see Jesus even if he doesn't take it away and this is the last thing this last thing. So Tobit after all this brokenness in his life

after all this exile in his life at the end of the book of Tobit chapter 13 Tobit has this prayer and the prayer basically is he's still stuck in exile He's still in Nineveh, he's going to die in Nineveh. But he realizes something powerful. He realizes that, wait a second, God, you're even here. And not only are you here, you're doing something here

that you couldn't do if I was still back in Israel. He says this prayer. He says, praise him you Israelites. So praise him, you Jewish people, before the Gentiles. For though he has scattered you among them, right? They're exiles. Though he has scattered you among them, he has shown you his greatness even there. Here's Tobit.

It's like, I can't praise God because I'm not in Jerusalem. I can't praise God because I'm among a foreign people. And God says, actually, because you're among a foreign people, foreign people now know who I am. Because you're exiled. Now the people in exile now know who I am. He goes on to say, he says, in the land of my exile, therefore in the land of my exile, in my brokenness, I praise him. And I show his power and majesty to a sinful nation, that even in exile, even in loss, even when total healing is not given, he is not hidden. He is highlighted.

And the same thing is true for you. You are not ruined, and you do not need to be replaced. You're something more. Not ruined, not replaced, but redeemed. And beautiful. And the beauty, your beauty, is in the broken. Your beauty is in the broken and blessed.