A month or so ago, some of our Redemption Chapel women got away for a weekend. We spent our time together talking about what it would mean for us to become servants to the people around us – to voluntarily lay aside our own perspectives, political persuasions, backgrounds, privilege, and rights in order to serve and love and listen for the sake of the Gospel. We got into the nitty gritty of life and talked about how much of this will be lived out in embracing God’s diverse creation – His beautiful design of a human race that is ethnically varied.
Of course, the hard work of racial reconciliation and unity starts with awareness – understanding and embracing our brokenness. It’s the first step toward healing the divide that permeates our culture and even Christ’s church.
We talked about offering that brokenness back to God and asking Him to turn it into something new and even more beautiful. Kintsugi is the the image that helped us wrap our heads around this idea – it is a Japanese technique for repairing broken pottery with seams of gold. This idea is that the gold joints makes the final work even more beautiful than when the piece was first created.
In her book, Beyond Colorblind, Sarah Shin explains it this way: Each of us is made in the image of God – with our ethnic identities and backgrounds in tact like beautiful pieces of pottery. But sin – in the form of cultural idolatries, ethnic division, shame, racism, pride, and selfishness – causes damage and brokenness. Left unattended these cracks can deepen into bitterness, despair, etc. The result is a shattered, unusable vessel.
But, there is hope!
Jesus is like the gold. He enters our stories with healing, redemption, and reconciliation. You see, Kintsugi doesn’t deny the brokenness of the pottery – it uses it to tell a new story. Jesus picks up our individual pieces, putting them back together to tell a better story. Our scars become transformed by Jesus’ scars.
At Redemption Chapel, we want to tell a new story. We want to let God take our broken pieces and create a new, more stunning piece of art. One where He shines through to a hurting world. In the process, we realize that we might have to confront some downright ugly stuff in our own hearts. That we might have to change how we view ourselves and others. We know it won’t be easy but we’re pretty sure it will be worth it. Because we have the scene in Revelation 5 around God’s throne to show us how the grand story ends:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Stunning.
And, in my humble opinion, even more beautiful for having been broken.
Beautiful.