Devotion: Broken Open

Please take the time to read Matthew 27:3-10

Lent. Forty days of walking to the cross with Jesus. Again. Sometimes it almost seems routine. Ash Wednesday shows up on the calendar just ahead of Daylight Saving Time and St. Patrick’s Day. Give something up. Do something extra. Feel the weight of the walk. Does it really matter? Is God even paying attention? I don’t know about you, but it’s hard not to sometimes wonder, what’s the point? We know how the story is going to end. Jesus is going to die on the cross, be buried and rise on Easter Sunday. It happens. Every. Single. Year.  

Enter Judas. A regular guy who became part of Jesus’ inner circle. A guy perhaps best known for conspiring with the chief priests in some of their most broken moments as they plotted to crucify Jesus.  In the process, Judas betrayed Jesus in his final days, possibly the worst thing he ever did. And when he realized what he had done, when he was broken into shards of glass, he was completely consumed with remorse, believing there was no room for forgiveness, especially of himself. 

Ok, now think about the worst thing you’ve ever done. Your most jagged piece of brokenness that cuts your breath in half from time to time when you allow yourself to think about it. Maybe you committed a crime, or were unfaithful, or you unjustly judged someone else to your own detriment. Or maybe you said something you can’t unsay, or your carelessness caused an accident that hurt someone else. Or maybe it’s too hard or too painful to even put into words.

Or maybe your worst, isn’t a thing at all. Maybe it’s a series of things. Maybe you’ve worked too many hours and missed too many meals at home, or you’ve too often talked when you should have listened, or relied on vices to get through the days and weeks, or answered “no” and “yes” too many times when you should have said the opposite. Whatever it is, you know now you could have done better.  

Now think about being on the other end of the worst someone else has done. You saw the social media post not meant for your eyes, overheard a conversation not meant for your ears, sat waiting for someone who routinely didn’t show up, watched a loved one hurt them self and by extension, you.

And in the midst of the brokenness of life, the calendar, in the tiniest of fonts, says Ash Wednesday. Lent is coming. Lent is here. Exhale, big – or even just a little. You are forgiven. They are forgiven. And you can forgive – even yourself, maybe especially yourself.

Judas’s biggest mistake wasn’t betraying Jesus. It was punishing himself and those who loved him with his death. It was not realizing that his betrayal, his extreme brokenness, was forgiven in the walk to the cross, Jesus dying and Jesus rising. 

That’s the point of Lent. It’s why we spend 40 days walking to the cross with Jesus and why, once we get there he dies, is buried and rises again. To remind us that even when we are broken and at our worst, even when we are caught up in someone else’s brokenness and their worst thing, we are all forgiven, we can forgive each other and we can forgive ourselves. Every. Single. Year.

Good, Gracious and Generous God –
In a broken world, help me to remember that my worst moments don’t have to be the end, but a new beginning. And that your walk to the cross is a reminder to always leave room for forgiveness, for others and for myself.
In your name we pray, Amen.

Written by Dacia Kruse

Dacia lives in Lincoln. She is a lobbyist and mediator through The Mediation Center where she primarily works with parents who are separating and trying to figure out how to co-parent their kids.

She has been a member of Sheridan since the late 1990’s and serves on the Sheridan Church Council. She regularly attends Theology Roundtable and serves on a Saturday evening hospitality team, the Sunday morning Welcome Center team and as a Wedding Coordinator. In her free time, she likes to read, travel, shop and decorate her house.