BROKEN FOR US: Purpose in the Pain

Dean Bjorlin
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve 18

Broken Like Jesus

Most of us, if we’ve been around Christianity long—I so flippantly sometimes say, “I want to be like Jesus.” And you know, if I could say, “Who wants to be like Jesus? Raise your hand!” Both of you, that’s really good. Okay. And in my initial thinking of being like Jesus, I want to be loving like Jesus. You know, in Corinthians 13, “Love is patient, love is kind.” And you know, you could fill that in with, “Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind,” and all those wonderful qualities.

Back in the 90s, before some of you were born, half my life ago, it used to be very, very popular to wear these little rubber bracelets. They say WWJD, “What would Jesus do?” And I want to do the nice things that Jesus would do, don’t you? Three of you now, that’s good.

Well, there’s another way that we can be like Jesus that isn’t quite as popular, and that’s brokenness. Now it’s like, it just got a little quieter in here. You know, they say if you are suffering and you really don’t know what to do, they say right before you go to bed at night, drink a gallon of water. That way you’ll have reason to get out of bed in the morning. Now you can see what my wife puts up with every day.

But we all know brokenness exists in life. And we all know that Jesus experienced brokenness, but that was for us. So that’s kind of okay, right? I can handle Jesus broken for me. Usually we aren’t praying to be like Jesus to be broken. Or if someone has to be broken, and it’s not me and it’s you, fine with me.

Jesus, a few times in scripture, it says, “He broke the bread and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you.’” He was broken for you. He was broken for me.

We experience brokenness in our hearts most often through the life experiences that we go through. Brokenness can occur in the form of illness, which can be temporary or lifelong. And that illness can be non-life-threatening or life-threatening. We can experience brokenness through broken relationships cruelty from others, mental illness, loss of job, financial struggles, shattered dreams of how life was supposed to go and is not, poor life choices that give you consequences that you don’t want, death of a loved one (sometimes way too soon), accident, suicide, disappointment in yourself, watching your children or loved ones struggle and being totally helpless to do anything about it, loneliness, lack of friends, betrayal. How many are you really encouraged now?

A Lesson From Scripture

Jesus, I think, in Mark 6, gave like an object lesson—didn’t realize it at the time, I think. It’s kind of like last week when Christo gave the object lesson with the tire that was off his tricycle, you know, it’s something that means something else. And Jesus in Mark 6 said,

Taking the five loaves and two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them. They all ate and were satisfied.

In John 6, Jesus tells them to gather the pieces that are left over, that nothing be wasted.

And then the disciples picked up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of bread and fish. The number of men who had eaten was five thousand.

I often wonder how good that miracle bread tasted. My mom made, from scratch, sourdough buns that were the best. Right out of the oven, you can kind of flick your finger on them; they’re nice and crusty; you open them up, and you put like a pound of butter on them, and then some peanut butter and then some homemade raspberry jelly, and I could eat about ten of those. They were great. Jesus had them pick them all up, all the extra pieces. And he wouldn’t have had to. He could have easily said, “Don’t worry about that, guys. There’s more where that came from. I can make anytime you want it.” But he didn’t.

Then a little later, in Mark 6, basically the same thing.

He told the crowd to sit down. When he had taken the seven loaves, he gave thanks. He broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people and they did so. They had a few small fish as well, and he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward, the disciples picked up seven baskets of broken pieces that were left over. About 4,000 were present.

So here you have five thousand and four thousand; Jesus took what he had; he gave thanks; he broke the bread; incredible things happened, totally unexpected; all ate and were satisfied; and all broken pieces were picked up.

Then in John chapter 6, John was there as well. And he just, you know, if three or four of us saw the same thing, we might tell the story and remember different things or add our own thing that we remember. And John did this. And in John chapter 6, after Jesus had fed the five thousand,

The people said to him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

Now it’s funny, the day before (roughly), Jesus feeds five thousand people out of basically nothing, and they say, “What sign will you give us that we might see and believe?”

And Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who had given you the bread from heaven, but my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

And they said, “Sir, always give us that bread.”

And Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you’ve seen me and still you do not believe.”

Now think about it during our times of brokenness that we go through. Jesus knew suffering and sorrows. He was actually born to very poor parents. From Israel, he went to Egypt for a while. So you could easily say, for a while, he was a refugee. He was misunderstood by his family. What would you think of your sibling if, by the way, he said, “I’m God?” His family misunderstood him. He was in the garden. Peter, James, and John. “Guys, pray with me.” They fell asleep. He was let down by his closest friends when he needed them most. He experienced fatigue, physical pain. He was lied about. Crowds shouted to have him crucified. At one point, Jesus was so desperate, he said, “Father, take this cup away from me.” He knew the suffering ahead, but in his love and submission to God’s great plan, he went to the cross. He bore our guilt of our sins. He was broken so you and I could experience life. Jesus was broken for a purpose: to give life to the world.

Our Response to Brokenness

When we go through times of brokenness, most of us had no choice as to what it was. We had no choice as to how it came, when it came, why it came. It could affect our family, illness, jobs. It could affect—you heard me give you a list of things. And there’s probably more you could come up with. You could go, “You forgot mine!”

We also have no choice as to how long it will last, how you can fix it, or if you can fix it. They say you don’t get to choose the storm; the storm chooses you. But when the brokenness process begins, the pain or the discomfort of it can consume our thoughts. “I can’t stop thinking about it.” And you’re happy for little blips along the way of day that help you forget about it. And then it’s like, “Oh yeah.”

And we can, understandably at times, become very self-absorbed, sometimes out of necessity, but sometimes because our pain is so great, we can’t see beyond it. Brokenness, grief, or suffering can be like a heavy weighted blanket, or a cloud that is always over us to remind us of our pain. It can be physically, emotionally, or spiritually draining. And when we’re going through it, we don’t always respond as normal to our loved ones around us. It’s like if you have a capacity of up to a ten to handle life and, you know, maybe what you’re going through pushes you right up to an eight or a nine, so a normal two or three on the scale, which normally would be nothing, puts you over the top, and you overreact to whatever little thing happened. It can kind of paralyze us in life, so we’re kind of stuck in the moment.

We can have feelings of sadness. We can be anxious. We can get really, really angry. But Christians don’t get angry, do we? No. We can feel hopeless. We can shed many tears. We can go on autopilot and be blah—not high, not low.

We can have self-pity. “Nobody has suffered like me.” You know, like parents sometimes, “Pain?! I’ll show you pain!” You never thought that with your kids?

And sometimes for me, one of the ways I kind of handle pain—rightly or wrongly—I rank it, okay? I’m going through my pain. You guys over here, you’re going through a lot worse, so I guess my torn fingernail isn’t so bad. They’re going really bad; compared to mine, it’s not so bad. Or, “That’s all you got? I am really suffering.” It’s like a teenager has a breakup, and you call it, as a parent, “puppy love.” But it’s true, it’s only puppy love, but it’s very real to the puppy. It’s the worst pain they’ve experienced in that way in their life.

And we go through different “levels,” if you want to say, “experiences” with pain. And by the way, if you’re with someone who’s going through pain, to tell someone, “Well, look at them; they have it worse than you, so you should feel better”—that’s not very helpful. But being there and listening can be amazingly helpful.

If we don’t transform our pain, we’ll most assuredly transmit our pain. A simpler way of putting that is what you may have heard, “Hurting people hurt people and are easily hurt.”

In Philippians 3:10, Paul is writing, he goes, “I want to know Christ.” Yeah, we all say that. “Yes, to know the power of his resurrection.” Yes, I want that. “And participation in his sufferings.” Not so exciting. “Becoming like him in his death. And if so, somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” Remember, it says, “He broke the bread, and Jesus said,” I’m kind of paraphrasing, “‘This is my body, my pain, my brokenness, which is for you.’”

Questions

I have three little questions. First question is a no brainer, just to kind of get you in the answering mode in your mind.

First question: Can we get through this life with no pain or suffering? No, you’re on a roll. Good.

Second question: Why me? Have you ever asked why not me? Who am I that I should escape this world and not suffer? I’d be willing to be one of the first. I’m sure some of you would be willing to join me, but that’s not reality.

Third question: What if, in our journey or quest to be like Jesus, the brokenness we go through was ultimately never meant for us, but we were and are being broken for others, just like Jesus? We all are aware that we want to be like Jesus. And it’s when we are broken, Christ can maybe be more seen in us, and we aren’t in the way as much. But I came across this saying. It says, “Suffering or brokenness seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our pride or our illusion of control in this world.” I’ll say it again. “Suffering or brokenness seem to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our pride or our illusion of control in this world.” In the stories with the object lesson, Jesus multiplying the bread, they picked up all the pieces that were left over. Every little piece had a value. And I thought maybe our suffering does too. Maybe Jesus doesn’t want to waste our suffering. Philip Yancey said, “Suffering can never be ultimately meaningless because God has shared it.”

Community in Brokenness

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 1,

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord and Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles.

Not after it’s done. He comforts us in all our troubles. I’m adding the word “why?” Why does he comfort us in all our troubles? One, because we need it, okay? But…

Who comforts us in all our troubles. [Why?] So that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

So what if today we were the bread that was broken? What amazing things could God do through one church family full of broken people like you and me? See, it’s a process that happens to me over and over again in life. And you can’t hurry the process. Have you ever tried to bake something and say, “Oh, the directions say 20 minutes? It’ll be good enough in 10 minutes”? Doesn’t work. Not that I’m an experienced baker, except for making pizza. Can you get paint to dry any faster?

You just laid a concrete floor. Can’t hurry that process. You’ll pay for it if you do. Isn’t it weird? Concrete floor, fresh sidewalks, the temptation—you got to put your handprint in it, right? You got to write your initials and the day or something. We have an old red barn shed in our backyard, and there’s a concrete slab there. Maryjo and I live in the house I grew up in, so that house has to be at least 20 years old. And that concrete slab is broken into, I don’t know, like five pieces, you know, big cracks in it from many years ago. And there’s a—my dad had put the year in there. Obviously, you know, you do it with a finger. I think it was like 1956. And that’s firmly set. You can’t hurry the broken or the healing aspects that we go through in life.

One of the temptations when you go through the difficult time is to isolate yourself. “Nobody has got it as bad as me.” Or maybe you don’t think that, but because of your pain, you stay home for a little while. We need each other. We really do. At the end of the message, which will be in just a few minutes—which means nothing when a pastor says that—but at the end of the message, I’m going to ask people to stand that are going through brokenness right now. And we’re just going to have someone lay their hand on your shoulder. I will lead us in prayer. But as I was thinking that’s how I wanted to end the service, every week it could be different people, kind of like popping up like the whack-a-mole thing. You know, this week, this week, this week. And it’s not an abnormal “something’s wrong with you” process. It could be a normal “what’s right” process from God’s perspective. Does it feel wrong to us? Sometimes it does. Sometimes we were treated very poorly, unfairly, and we’re broken.

Don’t be afraid to give someone a call just to say, “How you doing?” That opens the door. And most of us, being fine Scandinavian people, will be doing fine, right? A missionary a long time ago asked a young gal in our youth group, “How you doing, Laurie?” And she goes, “Fine.” And he said, “Is that fine ‘pretty good’ or fine ‘not-so-good’?” And I thought, man, what a great response to that, just to go just a little deeper. And our typical off-the-cuff response can be, “I’m fine.” But I heard us saying, pastors, as you look on the congregation, every one of us here has a secret sorrow in their life that maybe nobody else knows. It’s pain or brokenness. One of the things going through brokenness does, it gives you a heart of compassion for pain. It gives you a grace for other people. Because it’s very true, except for the grace of God, I could be in that situation. You could be in that situation.

Communion

I’m going to switch right down to the Communion table, and I don’t want you to, like, shut your mind off on the message. This is a continuation, okay, from a different location. In Mark 14, Jesus was doing what we now know as the Last Supper. And here he does—he’s taking the object lesson of breaking the bread from five thousand, the four thousand, whatever—and now he’s also—they were celebrating the Passover, which is reminding how the people were set free in Israel. And Jesus took the bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said to his disciples, “This is my body. Take it.” Paul wrote it this way:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you.”

So this morning, if everyone would just take the bread—and if you are brand new here and you have a personal relationship with Jesus, you’re more than welcome to share with us today. So everyone, just hold the bread in your hand. In just a moment, I’m going to have us break the bread. It’s so easy—I’m speaking personally—to kind of flippantly go through, “Yeah, we did Communion, da da da da… go on.” In just a moment, I’m going to have us break the bread, and we’re just going to take a moment of silence, a few moments to think about that this represents the body of Jesus, which is broken for me. That great, great love was broken for me. And maybe somehow, someway, I could use my brokenness for someone else. Let’s break together.

Let’s take the body of Christ broken for us together.

In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

On the screen now, I have a prayer that I would like us to say together, okay? Lord, thank you for being broken for me, that I may have life. Today, I want to acknowledge my pain and brokenness. May it not be wasted on just me. Somehow, someway, use my brokenness for others, that it might bring them life in you. Amen.

Right before we have our closing song, if you might be one of those that’s going through a time of brokenness right now, I’m going to ask you to do a courageous thing, but we’re family. Just stand right now. All right. And now, in just another moment, I’m going to ask everyone to stand. You see people there. I will lead us in a prayer, but go place your hand on someone’s shoulder that’s standing. That hand says, “I care.” Their hurt might be different than your hurt, brokenness, and ours, but in our family here, there should be nobody without a hand on their shoulder. Feel free to move from your chair if you need to.

Dear Lord, you see the people standing. You know their hurts so much better than maybe they do themselves. We just know it hurts. Lord, the only promise that we have is that you will never leave us or forsake us. You will be with us. Though we might not ever understand why things have to happen on this earth, Lord, someday we will. But until then, Lord, we choose to trust you and your love in the pain, in the unknown, in the hurt, and that you’ll help us through this. In your name we pray, Jesus. Amen.