Several years ago Sherry and I went to an antique show where we found a vender who specialized in Wedgewood China. He had a number of lovely pieces, so we splurged and bought a whole shopping bag full. He wrapped each piece carefully and placed it in the bag. The prize was a beautiful teapot in pristine condition.
When we arrived home, I was carrying the treasures up the stairs to the front door, and on the next-to-the-top step I stumbled, and down I went — bag first. I couldn’t tell if it was the china or my heart that I heard break as the bag hit the landing.
When we got inside we unwrapped the pieces to survey the damage. Those in the bottom of the bag — including the prized teapot — were shattered. We discarded the broken shards, but I just couldn’t bring myself to toss the broken teapot. I counted up the pieces and decided to try to glue it back together. I was able to do a reasonable job of repair, but, of course, the teapot would never be the same. The damage was permanent.
Today it sits in a display cabinet, and most people don’t notice — because they don’t take it out for a closer look — that it is a shattered teapot pretending to be whole.
So much of the brokenness of our lives is like that. Tragedy strikes (a good deal of it self-inflicted), we pick up the pieces, do the best glue-job we can, and move on. But the cracks (or scars) are there for anyone to see who looks very closely. The best repair jobs we can provide are inadequate.
Hold that thought…
The other day I learned for the first time (through some off-hand reading) of the Japanese art of kintsugi.
The term, which means “golden joinery" in Japanese, refers to the art of repairing broken ceramics with a lacquer resin mixed with powdered gold. The resulting seam looks like solid gold. The goal of the kintsugi craftsman is to make a fractured piece look more gorgeous, and more precious, than before it was damaged.
It is said that the process originated in the 15th century. A shogun named Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China to be repaired. When it was returned the result was completely unsatisfactory. The repairman had simply rejoined the broken shards with ugly metal staples.
Japanese craftsmen were quickly challenged to find another form of repair that might make a broken piece look as good as new, or even better. It was even said that some people deliberately broke vessels in order to have them transfigured by the golden veining.
Such an artistic capacity to “beautify-through-repairing” points up the uniqueness of human beings as creatures made “in the image of God” — designed to reflect the glory of their Creator.
As I mentioned earlier, often our attempts to repair the damage done to our lives by sin does little more than put the pieces back together in some kind of functional way.
But God’s grace is such that he is able to show forth his golden glory in the repair and restoration he brings to sinners who come to him trusting in the grace of Christ.
When we confess our sins, God applies the judicial satisfaction accomplished by Christ on the cross to them, and the debt is (as John Murray said) not cancelled, but liquidated — paid in full.
When the Holy Spirit renews our sin-broken human nature, he makes us new creatures in Christ. We are not merely restored to what humanity once was in the “first Adam,” we are glorified in union with the “last Adam,” Jesus.
In an astonishingly wonderful way, God’s gracious kintsugi makes repaired sinners more beautiful and glorious than they were when originally created.
I often think of the story of the Jacob, who wrestled with the angel of the LORD by the River Jabbok (Genesis 32). Jacob had skillfully defrauded his brother Esau of the patriarchal birthright, had fled from the land, and prospered in his dealings with Laban. He was now a wealthy man, and wanted to return to the land, but first he had to face an angry Esau.
Jacob sought the LORD, who he understood had been the source of his prosperity: “I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps” (v. 10). He is reassured of the LORD’s blessing as he returns to the land. But the fear of his brother persists.
That night Jacob was left alone by the ford of the Jabbok.
And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” (vv. 24–28).
Jacob is comforted by the divine reassurance, and as it turned out his brother Esau welcomed him — he “ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept” (33:4).
But Moses leaves us a very telling detail — from that day forward, Jacob limped because of the dislocated hip (32:31). Jacob was “broken.” And yet the injury — one that would ordinarily be considered a handicap — was for him a token of God’s mercy. It spoke to him, with every step, of God’s covenant-keeping faithfulness. As a result the broken Jacob was more beautiful than the original — because of God’s kintsugi.
A question that has always challenged the faithful is “How can God allow — or (in the case of Calvinism) ordain — evil as part of his plan for creation without without being the ‘author of sin,’ or making ‘evil’ somehow less evil?” It is a complex problem, and many have puzzled over the theological and psychological answer.
But surely at the heart of any answer must be the realization that the presence of sin, and God’s redemptive remedy for it through his Son, Jesus Christ, reveals things about God that would not have been evident (or as evident) had humankind not fallen into sin. In Romans 9:19–24, Paul explains that God’s response to the presence of evil in his creation demonstrates his glory — both the justice of his wrath and the riches of his mercy.
When we think of that in individual terms as sinners redeemed through faith in Christ, it brings us back to God’s wonderful kintsugi.
As we look at ourselves we see plenty of evidence of our brokenness — wounds of various sorts inflicted upon us by others, and by circumstance, and especially the harm we have done to ourselves because of our self-centered pride and willfulness.
But we also see the evidences — the “golden joinery" — of God’s gracious repair work. Like Jacob we limp — but every limping step reminds us that we have encountered God — and not only have we survived, we have been transformed.
The risen Jesus is beautified in part by the golden wounds he displays — the price of our redemption. As the Spirit remakes us in Jesus’ likeness, we too bear the golden scars of our sin, now made glorious by the healing mercy of God.
O Savior Christ, thou too art man,
Thou hast been troubled, tempted, tried;
Thy kind but searching glance can scan
The very wounds that shame would hide.
Thy touch has still its ancient pow'r;
No word from thee can fruitless fall:
Hear in this solemn evening hour,
And in thy mercy heal us all.
