A Meditation on the Heart

Homily for Sunday, March 25, 2012 Buck Mountain and Graves Chapel


Lessons:
Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Psalm 51: 1-13
Hebrews 5: 5-10
John 12:20-33

In March of 2011, just a year ago, the Oxford English dictionary added the first non-word—a graphical symbol that stands for a word—to its hallowed tome. Do you know what that symbol was? The one that has come to represent LOVE on bumper stickers and t-shirts and even in the title of a funny movie from 2004: I Heart Huckabees. That simple and symmetrical symbol, often colored pink or red and always a very important part of Valentine’s greetings, carries powerful weight in our culture.

Have you ever wondered why the Tin Man was so sure he needed a heart? After all, as he travels the yellow brick roads of Oz with his trusty companions, he demonstrates great courage and kindness numerous times, and courage and kindness are both attributes we associate with the heart. In his song, the Tin Man croons, "When a man's an empty kettle, he should be on his mettle, and yet I'm torn apart. Just because I'm presumin' that I could be kind-a-human if I only had a heart. I'd be tender--I'd be gentle and awful sentimental regarding Love and Art. I'd be friends with the sparrows and the boy who shoots the arrows, if I only had a heart." The Tin Man understands that in order to be human, he needs one thing we associate with a heart--no, not the blood that gets pumped through our bodies to keep us alive. He needs love, and the human heart is where love is found. That goes double for the Christian heart. If it's not about love, then it's not Christianity. Our God is a god of love and mercy and kindness. That doesn't always play itself out with roses and valentines; sometimes love has to be strong, brave, or demanding.

The prophet Jeremiah, who is also credited as the author of the Book of Lamentations, usually speaks words of love most of us would rather not hear. As we used to say, Jeremiah can be a real downer. He has been called the "weeping prophet," and he had good reason to weep. Tasked by God to decry the sins of the people and prepare them for the destruction of Judah and their captivity by the Babylonian army, Jeremiah was not a popular guy. In fact, Jeremiah is so much associated with foretelling doom that any long speech in which the state of society is lamented and destruction predicted is called a Jeremiad.

Our reading from Jeremiah for today, however, seems completely out of character for the prophet. These are the sweet words of a lover, not a lamenter. "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah...I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more." Through Jeremiah, the Lord says he had considered himself to be the husband of the people, and even though they have repeatedly broken his heart, he forgives them and says he is willing to make a new covenant with them. And how will the people know the Lord loves them and is with them? They will know it because God himself will write it on their hearts. In this way, God promises a deeply personal, loving commitment to each of us.

As I read through today's lessons preparing to write this homily, I was struck by how the collect, the lesson from Jeremiah, and the psalm all make reference to the human heart. The psalm includes a plea familiar to anyone who reads the daily morning office: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." If God is going to write his covenant of love on our hearts, then he himself will prepare it by wiping clean the slate.

The beautiful words of the collect suggest what we associate with our hearts: the emotions. "Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found." From ancient times, the heart has not only been associated with the emotions--especially love and courage--but also with the soul. It often seems that the heart and its companion the soul are given more weight than the brain, which is usually related to powers of reasoning. Since the word heart is mentioned 867 times in the Bible, the connection between the heart and the soul is very much a part of our traditional understanding of the way we relate to God. Listen to a few examples:
"Trust in God at all times and pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us." (Psalm 62)
"When you said, 'Seek my face,' my heart said to you, 'Your face Lord will I seek." (Psalm 27)
"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
(Matthew 6)
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 6)
"The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart." (Psalm 34)
"Let us draw near with a true heart, in all assurance of faith." (Hebrews 10)
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:34)
"For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him." (2nd Chronicles 16:9)

In many other passages we are told how God searches our hearts: in 1st Samuel 16, "For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." In Genesis 6, God has examined the hearts of humans, and he now contemplates destroying them all by flood for the evil he finds there. "The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually...and it grieved Him to his heart." Isn't it reassuring to think of God's sharing this characteristic with humans--having a heart that can be broken just like ours? The fragility of the heart is connected to the emotion we associate with it most closely--LOVE.

The fragility of the heart, and especially God's heart, reminds us of the sterner side of love, the requirements of love that are not the easiest to bear. In today's Gospel lesson from John, Jesus is preparing the disciples for his final hours. As usual, He speaks in a parable, saying, "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Christ speaks here of the kind of love that produces the ultimate self-sacrifice for the sake of others. He would be the grain of wheat that would fall into the earth and die so that many others might live and flourish. At the time of his crucifixion, it would probably have been possible to count on the fingers of one hand those standing near the cross who would admit to being his followers. Today is it even possible for us to number how many proclaiming Christians have lived down through the centuries and still live as a result of Christ's death? Would anyone standing beneath the cross have been able to predict the fruit Christ's death would bear? Most of them thought all their dreams had ended. They thought the bold teacher they had loved and the experiment they had witnessed were failures. Christ knew better. He understood the ultimate gift of love when he said, "Those who love their life lose it, but those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." Forgetting himself in his love for others, Christ truly served the cause of love in a way that has drawn countless people to him. As He said, "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." His was a very great and a very wise heart.

Remember what the Wizard of OZ said to the Tin Man when he awarded him his heart? "A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." In this paradoxical way, the Tin Man is like Jesus. Emptied of his heart from the very beginning, the Tin Man risked all he had, to the point of being broken in pieces, to protect his new friends. Believing he did not have the capacity to love, he became love. And he was rewarded a hundredfold by the love of his friends. The Tin Man’s love bore fruit, even when he didn’t have a heart. What kind of fruit is our heart bearing?

I HEART you! Amen.