St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Promise of the Heart – Rev. David Mundy

Jeremiah 31:31-34 Psalm 51 John 12:20-26

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I was twenty-five and recently ordained the United Church shipped me off to the province of Newfoundland where I served five relatively small outport congregations. The largest was in the village where we lived and it had an active choir made up mostly of senior citizens.

The matriarch of the choir was a woman named Aunt Ginny. There was a quaint custom in outport communities of making everyone over the age of sixty or so an honorary aunt or uncle whether they were related or not. While this may sound like a lovely custom, I wouldn’t have wanted Aunt Ginny in my family tree under any circumstances.

She had strong opinions about what should happen in church and it soon became obvious that the things she didn’t want were strongly related to the young mainland minister. She sure didn’t like the fact that I encouraged “unworthy” people to take communion, she hated my alb because it was too Catholic, and she practically had a stroke when I introduced the children’s time. “Why is the minister rolling around on the floor with the children?” she wanted to know. When one of my colleagues came as the anniversary speaker and he brought his hand puppets I thought blood would be shed. And he was a Newfoundlander!

For all this, Aunt Ginny was one of the flock, and so I went to see her in her home when the word spread that she was having heart problems. It turned out that her pacemaker was “on the fritz” and she was going to have it replaced – again. She told me that she had suffered through a series of pacemaker malfunctions as they pushed their way back out to the surface of her skin. In fact she had a virtual pacemaker museum on her mantle piece made up of the rejects. I want to tell you that there were a half dozen but it was actually three or four. As I listened to her go on about her woes it did occur to me that she was a hardhearted woman and even the pacemakers knew it!

Of course this was a spiritual judgement on my part, not an informed medical opinion. Matters of the heart come up a lot in ministry, whether literally or figuratively. Troubles with the ticker are serious stuff and heart attacks and pacemakers and bypasses are all part of pastoral care. Even though these are physical problems they often open us to serious spiritual questions.

Then there are the matters of the heart which are part of relationships, of love and hatred, of resentment or forgiveness. Isn’t it interesting that we speak of giving our heart to someone in love, and when we seek reconciliation we make a heartfelt apology?

In Greek, which is one of the languages of the bible the word kardia is used both in a literal and a metaphorical sense to refer to matters of the heart. We still use the word today: when we have physical heart problems we go to the cardiologist or if someone suffers a serious heart attack it is a cardiac arrest.

The bible is a book of the heart, although when the word kardia is used it refers to the inner being, the seat of our emotions, and also of our will, and of the centre of our spiritual life. The ancients didn’t separate the head and the heart, the intellect and the emotion, the way we do today.

Today we listened to the last of the covenant passages during this season of Lent, promises which are from the heart.

A prophet of Israel named Jeremiah has reluctantly told his people that they will be exiled from everything familiar to them because they have been unfaithful to God and don’t have the good sense to know it. His prophecy comes true, but it is not the end of the story. In this passage Jeremiah gets out of the way so that God can speak directly to the people telling them that “ the days are surely coming” when they will be led home again and that God will establish a new promise which will be written on their hearts. Remember that two weeks ago we listened to the promise of the commandments carved in stone, which we call the Ten Commandments. Moses was the intermediary, the one who went up the mountain for an intimate time with God and came down again with the ethical code for his people. With the new covenant there is the promise of a new beginning. The law will actually be internal rather than external written on the heart of each person, not given to just one leader who has a special relationship with God.

We joined together in another heart passage today, the same psalm which we heard at the beginning of Lent, Ash Wednesday. In this psalm the great, yet deeply flawed King of Israel, David, admits his weakness and wrongdoing and asks that God perform spiritual heart transplant surgery: ”Create a clean heart in me, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”

What do we think of these promises of the heart? Consider all the phrases we have in our vocabulary which speak of the heart?

The movie trailer tells us that the upcoming thriller will have heart-stopping action.

When love is lost or unrequited our hearts are broken.

When someone losses interest in a cause we say his heart just wasn’t in it.

Someone who acts without compassion is cold-hearted.

When someone speaks in a public or private capacity we try to decide whether it is insincere or comes from the heart.

Truly important things are matters of the heart. And along life’s journey we get our glimpses of that almost indefinable combination of sincerity and passion and conviction which we tend to describe as heartfelt.

Not long ago our sanctuary was filled with people who had come for the funeral of one of our longtime and deeply respected members. There were tributes from three of her family, all meaningful and touching. The last to speak was an adult grandson who reflected on his grandmother’s honesty and unfailing concern for him as a person. He concluded with a very direct and repeated “thank you.” What he said was not a sentimental “granny was a sweet old gal,” but it was moving – it came from the heart and a number of people have commented to me since then that they hope that when their day comes, a grandchild will speak about them with the same simple passion.

Sometimes we hear what we would call passionate pleas to make a difference in the important social issues of our time. We are often bored or overwhelmed by the facts and statistics about environmental threats and the effects of climate change, even when we know it is important. But many of us are motivated by the dismal legacy we will leave to our children and grandchildren if we don’t act responsibly.

These are examples of finding something authentic, meaningful, possibly life-changing. It’s not just a matter of tugging on our heartstrings (yet another phrase) but of bringing intellect and emotion together for a new beginning. And while that will require a willingness on our part, and an honesty which isn’t always easy, it is also the stirring of God and the gift of Christ which can do what we are unable to accomplish on our own. In the prophetic book called Ezekiel God again speaks directly to the people who have lost their way:

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Ezekiel 36:26,27

What a powerful promise from God, to touch our spirits with the Holy Spirit so that we might be renewed and made whole. We know within us, in that inner being which is “the heart,” that we want more than a “going through the motions” faith. We may actually remember a time when it was as though we fell in love with God, that our hearts were changed, but somehow that love has grown cold. The message of scripture is that the operating room is always available and there are no waiting lists! God is willing to do whatever is necessary to make us whole again.

Here is my prayer for you, and for myself, as we draw close to what is called the passion of Jesus, our recognition of Jesus last days. It is that in some way you will give your heart to Christ, as a response of body, mind and soul. To be a Christian with our whole self, our whole heart always means taking a risk.

When people came looking for Jesus in the passage we heard from John today he invited them to take a step beyond being spectators into a new way of being, that heartfelt life of a disciple. He told them:

Those who love their life will lose it,

and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Whoever serves me must follow me

and where I am, there will my servant be also . . .

I have been present a number of times when a person’s heart finally gave out and they died. Often the person who is dying is surrounded by loved ones and it is usually an occasion for sadness and tears. There is a sense of finality, although we pray that the loved one will experience a new and eternal life.

In a way our journey through Holy Week which begins next Sunday is our gathering around the bedside of Jesus aware already of the overwhelming sadness of Good Friday. The good news of our faith is that even when Jesus’ heart stopped beating as he hung on the cross of Calvary it was a new beginning, as well as an ending. As surprising as the empty tomb proves to be for Jesus’ followers, they begin a new journey of the Spirit which they could never have imagined before.

Today and every day we can receive the promise of the heart, and for this we can thank the God of resurrection.