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“Broken Worlds Rebuilt” - November 2, 2008

Rev. Dr. Richard B. Knight

Nov. 2, 2008

Exodus 2:11-22  (p.46 OT)

    Exodus 2 begins with the birth of Moses. Moses, though a Jew, was raised in Pharaohs palace by one of Pharaohs daughters. That part of his life story is told in the first 10 verses of chapter 2. Verse 11 quickly jumps to when Moses was a grown man.
Let’s take  a look.
Exodus 2:11-22.
    One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and saw their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsfolk. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, he saw two Hebrews fighting; and he said to the one who was in the wrong, “Why do you strike your fellow Hebrew?” He answered, “Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh. He settled in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well.

    The priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. But some shepherds came and drove them away. Moses got up and came to their defense and watered their flock. When they returned to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come back so soon today?” They said, “An Egyptian helped us against the shepherds; he even drew water for us and watered the flock.” He said to his daughters, “Where is he? Why did you leave the man? Invite him to break bread.” Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage. She bore a son, and he named him Gershom; for he said, “I have been an alien residing in a foreign land.”

    After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.


    Gordon MacDonald was a pastor for many years at Grace Chapel in Lexington, Mass. He’s a very respected Christian leader and author. He wrote a wonderful book several years ago, entitled, “Rebuilding Your Broken World.” It’s a book that grew out of his own personal experience of having his own world broken and then rebuilt. He begins the book by telling a story.

    Illustration. When Gordon was a child he knocked over a lamp that was very precious to his parents. The ceramic shaft cracked on one side when it landed on the floor. Gordon was alone in the room - so no one saw what happened. So he picked up the lamp and placed it back on the table with the cracked part facing the wall and therefore not easily visible. Each day in the few weeks that followed Gordon would wonder, “Will this be the day? Will this be the day that my parents discover the crack in their favorite lamp?” The longer it went on, the more his mind went wild imaging how much trouble he’d be in when they found out.

    Finally the day came. His mother found the crack while dusting the lamp. “Did you do this?” she asked. Gordon answered “Yes” and then braced himself.
She never said a word, but instead took the lamp to the kitchen, placed glue in the crack so the pieces would hold together, and once it dried, she placed it back on the table. MacDonald says, “The crack was always there, but the lamp was rebuilt. And it served its purpose for years.”

    Along the journey of our lives, we sometimes get broken too.  Losses in life, mistakes and sometimes uncontrollable events leave us broken. We have broken places within us - cracks - some of which will always be with us. But God’s grace is like the glue that held that lamp together. God’s grace can make us strong even in the broken places.

    Broken lamps can be restored.
    Broken hearts can be made strong again.
    Shattered lives can be put back together.
    Broken worlds can be rebuilt.

    As Gordon MacDonald tried to rebuild his world, he found something interesting when he turned to his Bible. He writes, “Almost everyone in the Bible had a broken-world experience.”  He says it’s hard to find someone who didn’t, either by their own actions or the actions and decisions of another. What he also discovered is that the Broken World experiences were “usually the turnaround moments ushering people into greater and more powerful performances of character, courage and achievement.” He says it like the football coach who told his team: “We learn almost nothing in victory; but we learn much in defeat.” In nautical language, “Calm seas never made a skillful mariner.”

    Moses is a good example. He grew up in the palace, as much privilege and comfort as a person could know in his day. But Moses knew he was different. He knew he wasn’t an Egyptian, and his innate sense of justice told him it was wrong for his people, the Hebrews to be enslaved by the Egyptian Pharaoh he had known his whole life. And Moses must have felt guilt ridden about the fact that his people were slaves in forced labor, while he roamed the palace freely. Deep down he was outraged at the injustice of it all. Perhaps he was even outraged at himself for living such a disjointed existence, cut off from his people and from who he really was.

    And one day it all comes to a head. He sees an Egyptian beating one of his fellow Jews. Moses looks around to see if anyone is watching. (There’s probably a principle there - if we have to look around to see if anyone is watching before we do something - we probably ought not do it!) So Moses thinks no one is watching, and so he kills the Egyptian and buries him in the sand. Unfortunately for Moses someone was watching. Pharaoh finds out and puts a price on Moses’ head.

    So Moses heads for wilderness, the desert of the Sinai Peninsula, leaving all the comforts of the palace behind. The only life he had ever known was gone. His world was broken. That’s the point the Bible makes with several details of the story. Moses marries into another religion - he’s given one of the daughters of Jethro, the Priest of Midian (see Ex. 3:1). They have a child and Moses gives him the name of “Gershom,” which means “alien” or “stranger.” That’s how out of sorts and broken Moses was.

    But God wasn’t done with Moses! This is only chapter two of the book of Exodus. God was just getting started when it came to Moses.

    Illustration. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells a very sad story in one of his books about a young couple that had everything going for them until their world was shattered. This couple had too much to drink at a New Year’s Eve party, and while driving home at dawn they struck a 13 year old boy on a bicycle, and the boy died four days later. They wrote to Ann Landers about their anguish and the guilt they lived with every day over what they had done. The young husband lost his job, dropped out of law school, and his wife too went through deep depression that had no end in sight. They signed their letter, “Forever Guilty.”

    Kushner writes that if he had had the opportunity to speak with them he would have told them about God’s forgiveness - that there are some things so large that only God can forgive them - that there are some things we cannot do for ourselves, such as remove a guilt so great. That is the work of God. He quotes Psalm 130 - “Out of the depths I called to You, O Lord. Yours is the power to forgive.”

    Kushner also questions that notion that one event should define one’s character and one’s entire life. He urges them to see themselves as God sees them, and with God’s help write a new chapter in their lives - perhaps being advocates for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, to begin to let something noble and decent and good emerge from the shadow of that tragedy. Kushner believes that broken worlds can be rebuilt. Of course as a Rabbi he knows the story of Moses. Who after spending years among the Midians, hears from the God of his ancestors, and at the Burning Bush. God rebuilds Moses’ world, giving him a holy and noble task, to free his people from their slavery. The Broken World of Moses and the broken world of the Israelites was being rebuilt.

    The Bible is filled with Broken World people finding new hope and then writing a new chapter in their lives, actually co-authoring a new chapter in their lives with  God’s help. In fact, it’s such a consistent theme in the scriptures, it’s almost as if the Bible’s saying we really are broken sinners in the hands of a loving God, who takes great delight and pleasure to rebuild broken worlds.

    From Abraham & Sarah’s barrenness and their journey to an unknown land that becomes the Promised Land.
    - to Joseph, their grandson, being tossed in a well by his brothers, then sold as a slave, but he ends up 2nd in command in Egypt and saves his family, rebuilding all of their worlds.
    - or how about Good Ole Jonah in the belly of a whale. Could life get more disgusting than that? (even if you view this story as a parable, think about the image of being in the digestive system of a big fish. The image is saying that sometimes our decisions can lead us into situations that are quite messy and intolerable.) Well, finally the whale decided he couldn’t stomach Jonah any more!
Jonah’s world had been broken by his disobedience but then rebuilt by a God so stubbornly loving that he refused to give up on Jonah.

    In the New Testament the two most prominent leaders of the early church went through well documented cases of brokenness.

    Simon Peter saw his world fall apart right before his very eyes, as Jesus his friend and Messiah was lead away to be beaten and killed. And in the midst of that brokenness Peter denies three times that he ever knew Jesus. Peter’s world was shattered and Peter just couldn’t take it any longer - “I never knew him.” Imagine Peter’s guilt and shame over his denial, especially since at the Last Supper he told Jesus, “I will never leave your side. I’ll be with you no matter what.” But when Peter met the Risen Christ on the shore that first Easter Sunday, Peter discovered that Jesus rebuilds broken worlds. Jesus takes him aside and gives him three chances to affirm his devotion, “Simon Peter, do you love me?” Of course he did - how can one not love a Savior like that?

    A Man named Saul experienced the same thing. Saul was a fierce persecutor of the church. He was so convinced that he was right in his Pharisaical ways that he even gave permission to kill the earliest Christians. Then one day, God shattered his world by literally blinding him on the road to Damascus - showing Saul how blind he really was. Saul found that sometimes God shatters a world so God can rebuild a brand new one. And you probably know that Saul the great persecutor of the church became the Apostle Paul, the great evangelist of the early church, who took the Gospel from Jerusalem all the way to Rome.

    Gordon MacDonald says it so well - “In pain, failure and brokenness, God does his finest work in the lives of people.”

    No one in the Bible demonstrates this truth better than Jesus. In fact, you can’t read the Gospels without noticing this fact - Jesus was drawn to Broken World people and he took great delight in rebuilding their worlds.

- The Samaritan Woman at the well who’d had five husbands leave her - she finds dignity and divinity and purpose in Jesus’ care.
- Or Mary Magdaline’s allegiance to Jesus after he cast seven demons out of her. Her world was dramatically rebuilt.
- Or the woman of ill-repute who wipes his feet with her hair & her tears.
- Or Zacchaeus the outcast tax collector who finds a whole new world in Jesus’ love and holiness.
- or the woman caught in adultery taken before him.
“I don’t condemn you as a person. I won’t let this one act determine who you are. Go and sin no more.”

    God is in the Rebuilding Business.
    Christ is in the Rebuilding Business.
    And if that’s the business of God, and if that’s the business of Christ, then shouldn’t this also be the business of the church?

We do our best work when we help one another rebuild our broken lives.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Gracious and loving God, thank you for your grace. Thank you for your delight in helping us rebuild our broken worlds. We open our hearts humbly to you, asking you to do your good work within us, that we might be well and wholely devoted to you, so that we might then help others rebuild their worlds as well.  In Christ’s precious name. Amen.