Sometimes Everything Has to Fall Apart Nov 13 2011

+Sometimes there’s pain and suffering before we get to joy.
And sometimes, everything has to fall apart to open up space for the new.
Chaos often precedes order. Things tend to get really messy before the new is established. While most of the time Incremental change works best, other times bringing about change requires something more dramatic, more sweeping, more all-encompassing. And such dramatic change can feel frightening and uncomfortable, it can seem thoughtless, even violent.
Remember our October Storm, the Columbus Day weekend 2006 snowfall that destroyed thousands of trees and left many of us without electricity for over a week? It seemed as if this storm was a disaster and that we’d never recover.
But, speaking from my own experience as a homeowner on Woodward Ave. at the time, the impact has been intense…but a disaster? Not at all.
The hundred year old magnolia tree in our front yard was one of the first to fall that night…but within two years of nature’s violent and seemingly capricious pruning that tree bloomed more fully and brilliantly than it had in a generation.
The trees that weathered the storm are healthier, more vibrant, more full of life. Yes, we lost a lot of old familiar trees, but through nature’s pruning, the new landscape is stronger, richer, fuller.
Sometimes there’s pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before a new order can be born
Of course we could have, in a measured fashion, pruned the trees, but no one would make the dramatic cuts needed to bring forth such incredible new life. The storm did what we wouldn’t do. Opening ourselves up to the threshing of the old in order to make room for the new, is something most of us won’t do without kicking and screaming. After all, the old, even if it’s weakening, even if it’s stagnant, even if it no longer works very well, is still more familiar, more comfortable than opening up to the unknown unfamiliar new thing.

Sometimes there is pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new can be born.
None of us likes today’s readings—a violent God banishing people to eternal damnation, a God of vengeance, a God of judgment. A God who is willing to rip apart the old in an effort to usher in the new.
In Zephaniah, the prophet is sharing a particularly vivid description of the Day of the Lord—the apocalypse.
Zephaniah was writing to the people of Judah soon after their last great king had died—Josiah. Their future uncertain, the glory days seemingly past; he was writing to people who were  looking backward, toward what was, and slowly realizing what will not be again. On the one hand the old order was destroyed. On the other, a new order was being formed, something incredible. The people had a choice—look back or move forward. What Zephaniah in our first lesson, Paul in our second and Jesus in our third tell us is this :
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new order can be born.
The Jews of the early first century, CE believed that the coming of messiah would be preceded by a lot of pain and suffering, a time when the good would be separated from the evil---when the worthy would be taken up into the arms of the holy leaving the rest behind to sure and certain destruction.
Jesus doesn’t shy away from this imagery…he just turns it around a little bit.
Well a lot bit.
You see Jesus did come to separate the sheep and the goats and the wheat and the chaff. But not to condemn one to eternal damnation and the other to paradise. Jesus’ separation is between those who “get it” and those who don’t followed by  a clear and precise road map for those who wish to move from the “I don’t get it,” to the “I do.”
The Parable of the Talents—our Gospel reading today-- provides just such a map.  The story tells us about money—a lot of money—and how each slave manages his masters’ fortune. But, of course, the meaning of the parable has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with riches. You see the bottom line to Jesus’ message here is—live life, take what you have been given and do good---don’t live in fear of what might happen, live in hope of what will happen. For life happens, stuff happens, some good and some bad, some thrilling and some terrifying but, if we live our life embracing all of our unique, varied and “especially for us” talents, if we use them to further the march of creation, then we’ll be ready for whatever comes next.
Think about it. If I had run out the evening of the October storm and shaken the snow off of the leaves the magnolia tree wouldn’t have snapped.
And it wouldn’t have grown back with such a vengeance. It wouldn’t be so healthy. If I had played it safe, the tree would have survived, endured, existed.
But I would have denied it the opportunity to regroup, to shed some of its old and tired bark, and embark on growing anew. Of being born again.
Jesus came to earth as an October storm: he came to shake up the old order and bring in a new. He, as he stretched out the loving arms of his holy embrace on the hard wood of the cross, loaded all the destruction, all the vengeance and violence, all the crying and gnashing of teeth upon his beaten body and, with the wail which tears through us all on Good Friday, caused everything to fall apart, once and for all, so that, on that first Easter morning, he could walk out of that tomb presenting us with something all together new.
A God of vengeance and violence is part of our biblical heritage…but it is only part of the story…the full story—the rest of the story-- includes a young man from Galilee who took all of the violence, all of the vengeance we can muster and defeated it. For every one. Forever. The itinerant preacher from Nazareth takes our fear, our doubt, our love of order and hatred for uncertainty and rips it to shreds, leaving us with the space to allow something all together new to germinate. Leaving us open to being Born anew. Again and again and again.
Sometimes there is pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new can be Born.
And sometimes we need to let the snow fall, the branches crack and the old fade away. For you never know what will grow in its place. +