Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses

And all the kings’ men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Of course, you no doubt recognize this simple child’s verse. It is one that we learn long before kindergarten—one so simple and familiar that most anyone can recite it. But its words are not the only things seared into our minds. While people still debate its original meaning—did it allude to a short, clumsy person of limited intelligence or to King Richard the Third and his defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field or to a British war machine used to cross moats and climb castle walls—the image that comes to our minds is clear. When we think of Humpty Dumpty, we think of that Egg-shaped character from Alice in Wonderland, perched on a narrow wall. We see this simple character in a simple children’s story.

But Susan R. Andrews suggests that Humpty Dumpty might be an appropriate character for understanding our lives. Like Humpty Dumpty many of us sit at the pinnacle of our success. We are perched atop walls that we have built to protect us and from which we can survey our accomplishments. But then, suddenly, something causes us to fall.

For Danny it was news that his wife of five short years was leaving. She had grown tired of the marriage, tired of the responsibilities it entailed. She wanted out.

For Tom and Carol, it was a phone call in the middle of the night. Their son had been arrested, charged with DUI. They had seen the signs, but chose to ignore them. Now, they found out, he was an addict—and had been for more than a year.

For Margarite the fall came when the doctor told her that her husband of more than half a century was ill, could not be cured, and would not last long.

For Melvin it was a locked gate at the factory where he had worked for years. The economy had slowed down, the shareholders demanded better profits, and management decided he and his co-workers were expendable.

Like Humpty Dumpty, they fell from their seemingly secure perch and their lives were shattered. They found themselves in a thousand pieces.

And it can happen to us. But we know that, don’t we? Oh, we live with lots of bravado. We often pretend that we are in control, but at the same time we are desperately trying to secure ourselves to the top of the wall. We stuff our bank accounts as fast and full as we can. We obsess on our children’s education and environment, hoping to, as one author called it, "childproof the world," insulate them and ourselves from trouble. We take vitamins by the handfuls and chase every diet fad imaginable. We buy security systems for our homes and guns for our waistbands. We do it hoping we will never fall, but few escape. Sooner or later, we find ourselves on the ground, our lives shattered. What do we do then? Who then will put us back together?

What all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot do, Christ the King can. Jesus is the one who can pick up the pieces and reconstruct our lives. He can make us whole.

That is the irony in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. While he was on the cross, it seems most everyone mocked him. The leaders scoffed, saying, "He saved others, let him save himself...." The soldiers offered him sour wine and said, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself." Even one of the other men being crucified derided him. "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us." Notice the heart of the derision—that this one who had come to save others, that has come to make others whole, could not save himself.

The irony is that by not saving himself, he was saving them. By his very brokenness, he made it possible for them—and us—to be whole, to be reconciled with God.

On that day so long ago, the only person who understood that was the other man nailed to the cross next to Jesus. We don’t know much about him. Luke simply says he was a criminal. Matthew’s Gospel says he was a bandit, a robber. But I can’t imagine that he was born to that. We can only speculate, but I would suspect that he had been born into a family who cared, who sought to rear him well, who gave him the best they had, as little as that might have been. But somewhere along the road, he went wrong. Some have suggested that the term "bandit" was used by Rome to designate insurrectionists. Maybe he was a zealot. Maybe he so longed to free Israel from tyranny that he took up arms against the Romans, and lost. Maybe he had just fallen in with the wrong crowd. Maybe he had come to a place in life so desperate that the only hope he had was crime. We don’t know. What we do know is that it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. It was not suppose to end on a cross. Somewhere along the way he had fallen and now his life was a shattered mess.

But even there on the cross, even in the last desperate hours of his life, he recognized that there was someone who could save him, who take the shattered pieces of his life and put them back together before God. He recognized that Jesus could make even him whole. And so in humility and faith he prayed: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He asked the King to put him back together again. He asked Jesus to make him whole.

And Jesus did. "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." That word "paradise," it means, "garden." Jesus restored this one who asked to be remembered to the sinless bliss of God’s presence, to a new life in God’s love.

Christ the King continues to pick up the pieces of shattered lives and make people whole.

Danny and his wife never got back together. At first he thought his prayers were not answered, but in time he began to understand that Christ was still at work, healing not only his heart but also his life. When he finally fell in love again, he was a different man and at a different place. He realized his role in the failure of his first marriage. Christ had saved him from the same mistakes. Christ had made him whole.

It took Tom and Carol a long time too. Their son’s addiction stripped away their pride, cut deeply into their savings, and put on hold their plans for life without children at home. But as they prayed together, asking Jesus to heal their son and mend their lives, they found themselves not only closer to Christ but to one another. They began to become the family they once imagined they were. Christ had saved them from their isolation and brokenness. Christ made them whole and what emerged from the shattered pieces was stronger that what had been broken.

And Margarite—oh, it was hard. She and her husband had always been private people, independent, able to go it alone. But when Margarite turned to Jesus and asked him to remember her, he did. But he didn’t just recreate her old life. He put it together in such a way that she would know that it was OK to be weak, to ask for help, to let people love her. He saved her from her arrogant independence and filled out her life with the love of others.

And Melvin, he struggled for a long time. The loss was not just the money—it was his identity. For years when people asked, he identified himself as a foreman at the plant. But what was he now? Through Christ he began to discover that he was child of God, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a friend. He began to discover that life was more than work and that he was more than the job he did. Christ saved him from the narrow definition of who he was and made him whole by helping him to become what he was in God’s eyes.

I wish we did not live in a Humpty Dumpty world. I wish that everything would go just right for each and every one of us. But it doesn’t. Such is the reality of a fallen world. But when we tumble off the wall of our self-sufficiency, when we find our lives in pieces, there is a king that can save us, can make us whole, can put us together again. It is the one who was "wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities." It is the one who waits for us to humbly pray: "Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom."