my thoughts on brokenness

A couple of days ago I posed a question about why my church placed the most famous failures of Peter and Paul on their stained glass. Here are my thoughts a to why and what that means about the Christian faith.

First I considered that maybe the inclusion of the rooster and of the scales are an example of a society that loves to tear down its heroes. Think about it, we love the National Enquirer, more people know about John F. Kennedy's relationship with Marilyn Monroe than his civil rights bills, we love to see heroes fall. So maybe these windows are just an example of that morbid fascination with failure. Maybe the mistakes of these men make us feel better about ourselves. Maybe those who installed the glass found Peter and Paul easier to relate to than Jesus, with all of his being God and such.

I cannot deny this train of thought outright, it is too intriguing and has an element of truth in it. It does comfort me (as I am sure many others) that Peter and Paul were people and that there was no attempt to hide this by either the early church or my own church. What I do reject though, is the modern cynicism that revels in their failures as some attempt to justify myself. The failures of humans cannot be something voyeristically fascinating for a Christian. Peter and Paul cannot become ancient Brad Pitt's or Ricky Williams', they need to be our models. Try as we might, perfection is not something that we are going to stumble upon or cultivate with rigid discipline. Our mistakes stay with us, follow us, hound us and mock us. The answer to this dilemma that I often see in our culture is to revel in and celebrate these failures. If you struggle with lust the answer I hear is; "Great! It is your natural nature, don't deny yourself!", if you are liar, the response seems to be; "What is truth anyway?". I think the response to these thoughts are displayed in those windows, your mistakes to matter, those scars remain.

Of course this is not the only response we have to our failings. There are also those who take every mistake as evidence that they should never again try or never again step out. If we are a generation that is marked by being great justifiers, we are also a generation that feels profoundly guilty, that is essentially not able to believe our own bullshit. Deep down, everyone I know, Christian, Buddhist, Agnostic, atheist or other, is riddled with a profound sense of guilt. Whether our exterior is marked with our intense discipline, or if we wear our hair long and our tattoos proudly, we are all unified by our shame. Their is a seemingly universally unsettled nature within us that counts our failures and we are internally mocked by them.

Here is where I once again find hope in the glass. Peter was a coward. A man who was so bold that he stepped out onto the water with Jesus, yet was so fearful that he hid with shame his affiliation with Jesus from a slave girl. Had he allowed guilt to dismiss himself from service to the early church, then the church would've suffered a great leadership vacuum. Instead he excepted the grace offered to him by a resurrected Jesus and stepped with boldness as a leader. He was what Henri Nouwen would describe as a "wounded healer". A man who had a well-known and shameful past, but represented Jesus by living as a free man. He was not shackled to his failings, thus people saw Jesus in him. I like to think that fearful people were the ones most drawn to him. That rooster is a picture not only of the man that Peter was, but also the gospel truth that we can become more than slaves to ourselves, that there is hope for even the most broken among us.

I wonder what would be on my own stained glass. What failings of mine, past and present would be up there? I also wonder whether I have accepted Jesus' invitation to reject justifying my acts and to reject guilt. This freedom is the most counter-cultural invitation that has ever been offered. It is simply my prayer that I would accept it and begin to live.