Hearts Broken Open
This sermon invites us to see grief not as something to avoid but as a doorway into God’s own heartbreak for the world. Through Jeremiah’s lament, Jesus’ startling parable, and Paul’s call to expansive prayer, we are reminded that emptiness makes room for compassion, generosity, and solidarity. When our hearts are broken open, we discover not despair but the balm of God’s healing love flowing through us for the sake of all creation.
The Glimpses of Grace podcast is a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. We are passionate about supporting the spiritual growth of souls, and we hope these sermons and conversations meet you where you are and enrich your soul as we all continue to make meaning in the world today.
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Transcript
What do we do with grief?
Do we push it down and try to move on?
Do we distract ourselves, cling to control, or numb the ache?
Or do we let it shape us?
Last week, Fr. Stuart preached a wonderful sermon on what it means to empty ourselves—
letting go of pride, self-importance, the illusion of control.
This week our readings push us even further:
as we are emptied, do we allow it to break our hearts?
where do we place our allegiance?
what do we let fill the space we’ve cleared within us?
Jeremiah cries out:
“My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick…
is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?”
This is not just Jeremiah’s sorrow. It is God’s own grief—
God’s heartbreak at the suffering of people,
at their turning away,
at their wounds that never seem to heal.
To empty ourselves in the way of Christ is not to escape grief
but to make room for God’s grief to live in us.
To be emptied is to become tender to the pain of the world,
to feel what God feels when fear and injustice run rampant,
when lives are crushed by self-interest and greed,
when neighbors are treated as expendable.
Here is the paradox:
our life is our practice.
Faith is not simply what we think or feel or hear on Sunday mornings— it is how we allow God’s heartbreak to shape us in daily life;
it is how we live when we are anxious about earthly things,
about things that are finite, inconsequential;
it is how we respond when we are tempted to cling…
to things, to control, to the illusion that we can secure ourselves.
Jeremiah’s cry—his fountain of tears—
is the honest prayer of a heart that refuses numbness.
Tears, after all, are not weakness but an unburdening.
Richard Rohr says:
“Anger keeps us trapped both in ourselves and outside ourselves. We need to be broken out of it and connected with its underlying source, which is often our and everyone else’s pain. Tears can do that.”
When we weep with God,
we are not swallowed by despair
but freed from the prison of our own anger,
our own need to control.
We join our grief to God’s,
and strangely, mysteriously, this is where hope begins.
Jesus gives us one of his strangest parables: the dishonest manager. This man realizes his time is up.
He can’t keep clinging to wealth, status, or the illusion of control anymore. So he uses what little power he has left to make friends,
to forgive debts,
to create a future rooted in generosity rather than grasping.
Jesus isn’t praising dishonesty; he’s using it to jolt us awake:
If folks can be that clever and urgent about securing themselves, how much more urgent and creative should we be about living in God’s economy? How much more shrewd in compassion,
how much more resourceful in forgiveness,
how much more invested in one another?
Emptiness creates space:
Do we fill ourselves back up with the same old pursuit of money, power, control? Do we allow our hearts to be broken open and reshaped around what God values?
Paul’s words to Timothy add depth.
He urges prayers for all people—
for rulers and leaders, yes, but also for the common good.
God desires all to be renewed and all to come to know capital T Truth.
If we’ve emptied ourselves,
if our hearts are softened by God’s grief,
then our prayers and actions must be expansive.
They must be as wide as God’s love, embracing every neighbor, every leader, every stranger, every enemy.
And this brings us to a cosmic horizon. Bear with me:
Because it is not just personal grief we carry,
not just national or communal sorrow…
It is cosmic suffering—the groaning of creation,
the deep wounds of humanity,
the sense that all of history aches.
And yet, in the same breath, we proclaim cosmic hope:
The trust that God’s love is larger than all our tears,
that Christ is making all things new,
that our small acts of loving-kindness
are woven into the largeness of God’s tapestry.
Our life is our practice.
Every prayer, every tear, every risk to love
is practice for the kingdom of God.
Every time we resist filling emptiness with false comforts
and instead let it open us to God’s presence,
we practice a life that is eternal.
Jeremiah shows us that to be emptied is to be open to God’s heartbreak. Luke challenges us not to refill ourselves with the pursuit of wealth or self-protection but to invest urgently in our relationships.
Paul reminds us that the shape of this new life is prayer and intercession for all.
We are invited to live with hearts broken open:
open enough to feel the ache of God for a hurting world.
open enough to resist the false comfort of wealth and power.
open enough to offer ourselves in prayer and solidarity with all people.
Jeremiah asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead?”
The gospel answer is yes—there is balm, and it flows through hearts broken open. It is not the balm of wealth, or control, or false securities,
but the healing of being shaped into vessels of God’s love.
So may we be wise with compassion, wide in prayer, and deep in love, until our emptying gives way to the fullness of Christ’s life in us— a True balm that heals the world.
Amen.