Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall (trying to climb to new heights, where no Dumpty had ever gone before, despite the “no sitting on this wall” sign). Humpty Dumpty had a great fall (no wonder—he had fair warning). All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. It took the king himself, who surrendered to those who smashed and shattered his broken body. The king himself gave his body to be broken for those who had broken their own bodies and lives by doubting his Word and defying his lordship. The king himself triumphed by putting himself back together again and rising to restore his people to wholeness and perfection in the sight of his Father and ours.
Broken toys and broken homes—children learn at a tender age that all is not right in their world. They note their own vulnerability, and they sense their own responsibility when they break another person’s toys, fleeing and making excuses more clever than Adam’s and Eve’s. Broken friendships and broken opportunities—adults know from too many experiences that all is not right in their world. They note their own vulnerability, and they sense that their own weaknesses and misestimations have cut short their strivings for success of one kind or another. Broken hopes, broken visions, broken dreams—all people know how easily plans and prospects are strained, cracked, and shattered. The Nigerian diplomat Chinua Achebe wrote of his experience of the civil war in the late 1960s under the title, When Things Fall Apart, a title that others have used to describe situations quite different from the brokenness of individuals and societies when war erupts and interrupts lives. All people experience strains and cracks that often lead to falling apart and breaking life.
The model for human life was perfect, but already in Eden, Adam and Eve could not believe that their Creator really knew what he was talking about. Eve strained to make sense of God’s order. In the process, she cracked it and broke it. Their world fell apart. They had only a broken way of life to pass on to Cain, Abel, Seth, and all who followed from them.
Then came the Unbroken One from the realms of glory. The mercy of the Creator rewrote the script for human life by writing himself into that script. He became the axial figure upon whom the world of brokenness turned, turned into the restoration of wholeness and perfection.
The Unbroken One did not hold onto his glory but rather opened his hand and let go so that he might join the Broken in the midst of their way of life with all its strains, cracks, and breakage.
He did not defend himself with the argument that he was indeed righteous. Instead, he had God, his Father and ours, count him as unrighteous, broken, sinner extraordinaire. The Creator of lambs and every other creature came to be the sacrificial lamb, the Passover lamb, whose blood the Holy Spirit smears on the doorposts of cracked and broken lives so that the angel of death might pass over us and all the broken who trust in the Broken One. Jesus Christ hangs before us on his cross, bloody and broken—for us, and for our salvation, for our deliverance, for our restoration to being children of God.
Jesus took our place under the condemnation of the law. God’s law pursues us,who have broken God’s creation, who have cracked our own lives and strained the lives of others. He has met us at our own Jordans, where water flowed with words that have given us a life restored to wholeness through the One who was to be broken for us. We encounter him as he reaches out his hands with holes in them to give us his gift of love—his blood shed and his body broken—for us.
We come to the table he sets before us to confess our sins. Those who wonder if they are too broken to be worthy to come to his table must know that he feeds the broken, the hungry, the starving, not those who are fat and sassy. We come with hands outstretched, eager to grasp what the chef serves. For we know that he serves up himself as the only source of nourishment that heals and restores, that puts us together with new life. His hand meets ours as he says, “this is my body given for you;” “this is my blood, shed for you.” He serves up righteousness or restoration of wholeness; he dishes out healing and resurrection as we thrust our empty, broken hands toward him. No other gift of love carries the intensity of this love that gave the body of the Incarnate God for us. No other gift of love delivers the same sense of joy and peace as does this gift of love made concrete by being broken on the cross and coming wholly restored to life from his tomb.
Fortified with his words of forgiveness, words which create for us the peace and joy of knowing that Christ has restored our wholeness in our Creator’s sight, we proceed into his world in all its fragmentation and brokenness, conscious of how life becomes strained and cracked, sometimes shattered and smashed. We take his words of restoration and life to those who are breaking and shattering and to those whom they have broken and shattered. We call their attention to their own brokenness, for some have not noticed that they are breaking their own lives along with the lives of others. From others we hear the lament of their brokenness, sometimes through their own decisions, sometimes simply as those who got in the way of others, who found ways to use them and throw them away. For perpetrators and for victims alike, we have an invitation. Come to the water, come to the table—come to hear the Broken One say, “given for you,” “shed for you.”
As we spread the healing and restoring Word of the Broken One, we serve as agents of his putting his world back together again for his chosen people.