Heartbroken
I’m writing these words having just left the hospital, where a friend lay dying. His family is gathered around him. There’s more love in the room than medical technology (which is saying something when you’re in ICU). He has lived a life of faith, and paradise awaits him. Still, it’s difficult to know what to say. Words are hard to come by...unless they’re Jesus’ words. “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it re- mains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” [John 12:24] I love that passage. I think I’ve used it at every funeral I’ve officiated. Its words are so consoling in a cerebral way that it should be comforting. And maybe it is...but I don’t often see it. Usually, as I’m speaking, most of the people around me are crying. They hear the phrase, “falls to the earth and dies,” and the mournful reason why we’ve gathered together reasserts itself: a death. It’s not so much a seed that is bursting, but their hearts. Broken hearts. Of course they’re not really broken, they just feel that way. And, gosh, how they hurt! The death of a loved one. A spouse decides the marriage is over. The betrayal of a friend. The willful, wayward child. Expectations not met. Hopes dashed. Dreams shattered. And our heart is aching, breaking. “Let’s just be friends.” “You didn’t make the team.” “I disown you.” “We regret to inform you that...” We know all about such painful experiences. Our own—or, often even worse, those of someone we love. But there are two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is, of course, to imagine the heart smashed into smithereens, shattered pieces and shards scattered everywhere, Humpty-Dumpty-like, defying any chance of future reconstruction. The other, what Jesus’ words implore that we keep in mind, is to imagine the heart being broken open, put to work in a new capacity—cracked open, ruptured, so that something else might break in. They both hurt. But while one way of looking at it focuses on the past (what happened) the other looks to the future (what’s next). While one is an ending, a death, the other is a beginning, a seed planted to produce future life. For Jesus, who knows more about rejection, betrayal, denial, and abandon-ment than anyone else who’s ever lived, a broken heart was the product of his love for the world, and his death the seed of eternal life. He suffered, but He wouldn’t exchange it for anything. In his book, A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer shares an old Hasidic story about a student who asks his rabbi why the Torah instructs the faithful to: “...place these words upon your hearts,” rather than in those hearts. The rabbi’s answer: “It is because, as we are, our hearts are closed. That’s why the holy words cannot be placed in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay, until one day, the heart breaks and those holy words sink in.” A crack in our broken hearts allows holiness to enter...and fruitfulness one day burst forth! “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” That’s another one of those funeral verses I’ve said and heard a lot. There will be tears accompanying every broken heart. But when that heart is a seed, they only water and nourish hope. I wouldn’t wish a broken heart on anyone; but if and when it ever happens to you, may it produce a bumper crop of faithfulness.