Beauty in Life's Blemishes

[Note: The following is a reflection that was given on Monday night during St. Matthew's Lenten Holy Hour.] 

Have you ever heard of the practice of kintsugi? I never had either, but recently I learned that kintsugi is a practice done in Japanese pottery in which a crack or blemish in the pottery is filled with gold to preserve the artwork. The flawed and broken pottery becomes even more valuable than before. The art is more beautiful because of the flaw, not in spite of its imperfection.

Example of kintsugi pottery

It might be surprising to hear, but this is true about our lives as well. Yes, we know too well those areas of our lives where we are cracked and blemished. We experience low self-esteem and anxiety. We suffer from compulsions like greed and lust. We are weighed down by self-pride and impatience with others. And we listen to voices that tell us we’re not good enough or holy enough.

In so many ways, we think that these cracks, flaws, and blemishes are barriers that keep us from God’s love. But my friends, Jesus’ life, mission, and ministry show us something else: that God loves us, not in spite of our blemishes, flaws, and cracks, but precisely through and in our weaknesses.

Jesus encounters us in our hurts, woundedness, sin, and struggle Jesus does not wait for us to be perfect or complete. Rather, our cracks, wounds, and flaws become the privileged place of encounter with Jesus.

This is the lesson we learn once again from tonight’s Gospel passage. The woman was caught in adultery. Yet in Jesus, she does not find condemnation, but a voice of mercy – a tender voice of forgiveness, and a voice that challenges her to conversion. In Jesus, the woman finds a new way forward from here brokenness towards healing and hope.

During the entire season of Lent, we have heard of the many ways in which the Lord Jesus encounters others in the cracks, the blemishes, and the imperfections of their lives. Three weeks ago, we heard about the Samaritan woman at the well and her movement towards conversion. Two weeks ago, we read of the miraculous cure of the man born blind and his discovery of faith in Jesus. And just yesterday, we head how Jesus went down into the depths of grief and death with Martha and Mary and freed his friend Lazarus from the sleep of death. 

In all these moments, Jesus enters into the messiness and chaos of life to bring healing, hope, and restoration. Jesus does the same for us, too.

Jesus and the woman caught in adultery

-Jesus wants to bring us the great gift of the Father’s mercy and forgives to those areas of our lives in which we are ashamed, to those areas trapped by sin, just like the woman caught in adultery. Are there any public or private sins that I am need of forgiveness?

-Jesus wants to speak to our hearts’ deepest desires and longings. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus wants to restore us to friendship with him and right relationship with others. How open am I to conversion?

-Jesus desires to illumine our lives with the truth of faith. Like the man born blind, Jesus wants to gives us sight, to see him with eyes of faith and to see our brothers and sisters with eyes of love. What is blinding me from trusting God in my life? What blinds me from seeing God’s goodness in others?

-Jesus desires to raise us up to new life, not just at the End Times, but now. Like Lazarus, Jesus wants to bring new life to all those areas in our lives that are enclosed in the darkness and lifelessness of our self-imposed tombs. 

What area of my life needs to be freed from tomb?

Tonight, we have ample opportunity to explore how it is that Jesus encounters us in our broken and flawed part of our lives. In the sacrament of reconciliation, we hear the Lord’s words of forgiveness and mercy. And sitting here in prayerful adoration of our Eucharistic Lord, we can ask Jesus to send his Spirit to reveal to us all those ways he encounters us and continues to do so in our lives. In all these ways, and in so many other ways, Jesus has been working toward our restoration. Jesus seeks to forgive us, to offer us the great gift of healing, of hope, of new life.

But Jesus does not act because we are perfect, whole, or complete. Rather, we experience Jesus’ salvific work in the cracks, blemishes, and brokenness of our lives. These are privileged places of encounter. Like the art of kintsugi in which cracks are beautified and made precious with gold, so too are our lives made beautiful when the cracks and blemishes of our lives encounter the saving love, grace, forgiveness, and peace of Jesus Christ.