Really, Iowa? What the heck, Kentucky! I’m getting my butt absolutely kicked in the family March Madness competition. I didn’t really need that $20 anyway, right?
Oh well. The truth is, I am one of those annoying fans who jumps into men’s college basketball at the very end. Only after the players have sweated through an entire season do I even sort of begin to care. The losses that broke their hearts, the injuries they recovered from, the victories along the way. I know none of it. I do know my bracket is completely broken and I am currently in 18th place of the 18 people in our group!
Nonetheless, I have come to terms with my brokenness over the years. A broken bracket, like broken me, is not the end of things. I have come to terms with life as it waffles between easy and hard, joyful and sorrowful, hopeful and disheartening. Tomorrow will come and I will mess it up/get something right all over again. I am so broken, I need Jesus, and there he is.
Preachers of mainline congregations tend to wonder how much that particular truth resonates with people who gather with us for worship. Do they come to worship (online or in-person) for the familiar tunes or for the tunes that find the crack in our hearts and seep in? Do they come for words to comfort them or to comfort the poor and forgotten? Do they come for a deep drink of the Spirit of life or to become vessels for others to take their own deep drinks?
Maybe they come because they are in 18th place and lost their $20 and are processing the shock of their brokenness. How did it come to this? I thought Iowa would see me through, but none of us are immune to disappointment. And yet, the one who has come to put our broken selves together does not join us only in the end, like I do in this tournament. The one who cares most deeply for your brokenness is there through every broken heart, injury, and victory. Now. Later. Always.
Lisa Lewton 