Mending God's Broken Heart

Homily for Wednesday of the second week in Easter

As a younger man, I was quite captivated by the Gibbs brothers who formed a singing trio that was known as the Bee Gees. They were one of the very close harmony groups that were popular when I was a teenager.

One of their songs was about a broken heart. The lyrics went something like this: “How can you mend a broken heart? How can you stop the rain from falling down? How can you stop the sun from shining? How can you mend this broken man? How can a loser ever win? Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.”

I was reminded of this song as I was praying with the words of today’s Gospel passage, the most famous passage from the Gospel of John. Everyone seems to know John 3:16 by heart. “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” How does this verse relate to the song lyrics? Well, one commentator put it this way: God so loved the world that he broke open his heart and sent his love to the world in the person of his Son. If you look at that passage from this perspective, you might say that Jesus’ life was spent mending God’s broken heart.

St. John was very explicit in the purpose of his writing. In the prologue, we read: “To those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name.” Last Sunday we read from chapter twenty which concludes with a reiteration of that purpose: “These signs are written that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.”

You have heard me say before that the word that St. John uses when speaking of love is intimately connected to the idea of being faithful, of being loyal. Throughout his Gospel John says many times that if we believe we will remain with him. The work of mending God’s broken heart is therefore now our own. By remaining with Jesus, we too can mend the heart of God.