2025.03.05 | Shattered

“Shattered”
Rev. Brenda Loreman
Associate Minister for Liturgical Arts and Children’s Faith Formation
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Ash Wednesday
March 5, 2025
Matthew 11: 28-30

“Our life is full of brokenness–broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God’s faithful presence in our lives.”
— Henri Nouwen

Tonight, we begin our journey through the season of lent. Ash Wednesday, as the beginning of Lent, developed in the 5th - 6th centuries, and was mandated as a holy obligation in the 11th century. Although Protestants did not maintain this ritual for the most part, it has come back during the 20th century liturgical movement as an important time for reflection in which we reclaimed this symbol and ritual of our spiritual ancestors. It plays an important role in helping us make meaning in the brokenness of our lives—brokenness in ourselves, brokenness in our relationships, and brokenness in our communities and in our world. At times our lives feel as though they have been shattered. But God, through our relationship with Jesus, offers us the hope of healing, repair and transformation.

This is the essence of our readings tonight. In the reading from Matthew‘s gospel, Jesus invites us into relationship with him as a way of offering us rest and relief from our burdens and brokenness. And Henri Nouwen reminds us that only  through returning to God again and again, and feeling God‘s faithful presence can we live with our brokenness and begin the search for healing and repair. 

I’d like to do something a little different for our time together tonight, and I hope you’ll bear with me. I’d like to take you on a little journey of the imagination through a guided meditation. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, that’s okay – you can sit and listen. But I hope that you’ll be willing to journey with me and see what you discover as we imagine together. I’d like you to ground yourself sitting as comfortably as you can in your pew, putting both feet on the floor if you can, and resting your hands gently in your lap. If you feel comfortable doing so, close your eyes, or have a soft gaze, where you’re not really looking at anything.

Take a deep breath in and slowly release it… and take another breath in and slowly release it. Feel your heart rate slow a little and your breathing begin to relax.

I’d like you to imagine that you’re on a beach. Perhaps it’s a favorite beach. A place you knew as a child, a place you went on a favorite vacation, or just a beautiful beach of your imagination. Wherever this beach is, imagine that it is empty, and you are the only one on it . Notice as you walk along the feel of the sand under your feet, the brush of the breeze on your skin, the warmth of the sun beaming down on you, the smell of the ocean, and the sound of the waves rolling onto the beach. Notice how the beach is a liminal space—a place where all the elements of creation come together, separate, merge, and part again.

Imagine that you’re walking along this beautiful beach and you notice something glinting, sparkling a little in the sand. What is it? You bend down, uncover it with your fingers and pick it up. It’s a piece of sea glass. It is a thing that has been broken. The vessel that it was part of had been smashed and shattered scattered into pieces. Unrepaired, it tumbled in the waves, rubbed against sand and rocks for who knows how long? And it washed up here on this beach of our imagination, to be picked up and held and seen as something new and transformed. 

Look at the sea glass that you hold in your hand. Hold it up to catch the light from the sun. Is it clear? Can you still see through it? Or has it been so polished with sand that it is now soft and opaque. Even so it glints in the sun and shines beautifully. What color is this glass? Is it aqua? Pale yellow? Amber? Deep green? Notice the surface; are there ridges or cracks? Do you see what part of the glass vessel it came from? Or is it so small and plain that the only story it tells is that it has been broken and transformed?

In your mind’s eye, feel the edges of the sea glass. Are there still sharp edges? Or is it so smooth by its journey through the sea that it is soft and rounded in your hand? 

Consider how this piece of sea glass represents all the elements of creation, combined to become a transformed thing in your hand.

It represents the earth: The sand we stand upon is the origins of glass-making. Glass is liquified, heated sand. In a way, the shards of beach glass are the epitome of “dust to dust”... or in this case, “sand to liquified sand.” To take it back even further, sand is created by the erosion of mountains and rocks over thousands or millions of years. Our piece of seaglass witnesses to the brokenness and erosion and weathering of the earth itself. All things become broken. All things transform. And every form we take is holy, whole, and beautiful. 

It reflects the water: As the water meets the sand and earth at the shoreline, we also are invited to a journey of meeting the Living Water that Christ offers us. Ancient peoples made wet soil in many forms as healing balms. Skin moistened, blood flow increased to the area, muscles relaxed. This still is practiced today in many places.

It contains within it fire: Glass can only be created when the sand is met with the heat of fire. No wonder the scriptures and poets throughout the ages have spoken of a “refining fire.” The heat of fire is always destructive, but with intention and care and tending, what transpires from the destruction of fire can be a new form with purposes that are good, useful, and beautiful. 

It represents the air: The scriptures depict the creation of human beings as having Holy Breath blown to animate our being. Glass vessels gained a new technique around the time of Jesus. In the first century BCE, glass blowing was invented, offering a way for molten glass to be shaped by blowing through a tube, creating an air bubble, a glass vessel, ready for practical or artistic purposes. Breath is part of the creation of our Holy Vessels. Breath is with us in our very first cry and will be the final song as we exit this realm. 

Gently close your fingers around the glass. Ponder your own brokenness: Perhaps it is a brokenness inside you. A shame or a burden or a sorrow or a grief that you carry. Or perhaps it is a broken or fractured relationship. Perhaps it’s a brokenness in your community that grieves you, or even the brokenness in the world. Look again at the glass in your hand; notice how it has been transformed. It is still broken. The scattered pieces of the vessel it was will never be pulled together again in the same way. And yet this broken thing is a thing of beauty. It has been transformed. It is not what it was, but it is a new thing, a beautiful thing, even in its brokenness. Feel how God’s presence can transform you, even as the tumbling waves have transformed this humble, broken glass into shimmering grace.

Feel your heart open in prayer: Healing Presence... as we feel this elemental part of who we are, we remember you created us, shaped us from dust in the palm of your hand. Someday we will return to dust, return to the palm of your hand once again, held and loved forever.

We lament in this moment the grittiness of life, the need for healing, the difficult and necessary process of transformation. Mark us as your own, remold us again and again as your people. Let the recognition of our own need break us open yet again for the sake of others, for the sake of the world.

Once more, ponder the glass in your hand. What will you do with it? Do you put it in your pocket as a reminder? Do you throw it back into the sea for more polishing? Or do you return it to the beach for another to find? See yourself taking that action. Turn from the waves and sea and sun and walk back to the present, and gently open your eyes and return your awareness to this moment.