Grace
to you and peace from God or Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen. The text is the Gospel lesson, Mark 7:14-23.
A
few Saturdays ago, my friend was having a difficult time playing golf. He was
puffing just walking a few steps from the golf cart to the tee box, and after
two warm-up swings, he could barely stand up. He realized something was wrong,
so he gave up and went home. By lunchtime on Monday, my friend’s doctor was
referring him to a cardiologist for tests and by Tuesday evening he was on the
surgery schedule for quadruple bypass.
There
was good reason for the doctors to move fast. According to the Centers for
Disease Control, in the United States over 610,000 people die each year from
some kind of heart disease. That’s one out of every four deaths. Over 700,000
will have a heart attack.[1]
There’s good reason it’s called the silent killer.
Fortunately,
for my friend, he is in the statistical category of having his blockages
discovered before either having a heart attack or dying from it. After a long
surgery last Thursday, a couple days of vacation in the ICU and a few more in a
regular room, he’s now back at home and on the road to recovery.
In
this morning’s Gospel lesson, Jesus speaks of the heart of man. Now, I need you
to shift gears with me a little bit. We’re not talking as much about the organ
as a blood pump, but more of a philosophical use of the heart. We think of the
heart as a place of emotion. We say the kids played with a lot of heart, even
though they lost the game; we say a heart is breaking when we experience
terrible loss and sadness; we say a heart bursts with pride when our child
walks across the stage for the diploma.
But,
in the Biblical world, both Old Testament and New Testament, heart was much
more than just a center of emotion. In the Biblical world, they saw the heart
as the center of their being. The heart was the core of the human being and
included a persons emotions, their rational thought, and the human will that
made decisions based on emotion and rational thought. So, a heart wasn’t just an organ; it wasn’t
just about feelings; it was literally the core of a person’s physical, mental
and spiritual life.
Jesus,
who is the Great Physician of body and soul, looks into our hearts, into the
very center of humanity and can see what our wholeness looks like. He makes a
spiritual diagnosis: “out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, sexual
immorality, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy,
slander, pride, and foolishness.” This is the natural condition of our heart
since the fall. This is heart disease of the worst sort. Our hearts aren’t sick
because something is put into it, Jesus says, as if the heart was good and fine
until someone else introduced sinful thoughts and desires to it. No…the heart
is where these evil things come from, from within, and they defile a person.
You’ll
sometimes hear one person say to another, “Do whatever your heart says to do,” or
“Listen to your heart.” That’s great if it’s an 80’s rock power ballad;
theologically, it’s some of the most dangerous advice known to man. Why? Well,
let’s listen to our hearts for a minute. What do they tell us?
We
look at what our neighbor has and rather than being content our heart wants it all,
too, and tries to figure out a way to keep up with the Jonses. God commands
faithfulness to our spouse or our spouse-to-be, but when we sit in the dark to see
Fifty Shades, our heart beats faster with sensuality and adulterous thoughts
and sexual lusts. Our hearts grow hard in jealousy when a coworker gets a
deserved promotion or a classmate gets recognition that we think we should have
received instead. Then there are the miscellaneous evil thoughts that make the
heart smile a smug little smirk when you see a mean boss reprimanded, a bully
being picked on by other kids, a politician humiliated, or you hear your ex got
dumped. Many times, this heart condition is a silent killer, nibbling away at
the edges of faith, trying to turn us away from Jesus. But other times, there
is such a violent heart attack that we can’t miss it. A man loses a gaming
tournament, grows frustrated at having spent time and money getting to the
games, and with his heart burning in anger, he shoots two fellow gamers and
then himself. “Out of the heart comes
evil thoughts…”
We
don’t like this diagnosis. We don’t like hearing there is something wrong with
our hearts. We don’t like admitting we have a problem inside us. Like a patient
in the hospital who just heard the word about bad tests results, we deny
there’s anything wrong. We can control it, we say, we just have to work harder
at being a Christian. Why, my heart isn’t that bad – you should see so &
so’s heart…why it’s so rotten, it makes Scrooge look downright healthy. We try to make our heart better and try to
take supplements – if I read my Bible more, if I give more time to the church,
if I volunteer at the soup kitchen and if help with Girl Scouts and if I coach
my son’s baseball team, and if I take the wife on a special vacation.
That
heart, the one that we’re tempted to listen to, arrogantly demands, “God,
you’re wrong!” The Bible says the exact
opposite: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and
that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to
his heart.” – Genesis 6:5-6
Jesus’
words cut us to the heart. That’s what the Law does, cutting like a surgeon’s
scalpel, cutting deeply to find the source of the infection. The Law reveals
the truth of our heart condition. But it also reveals this truth: just as my
friend could not fix his own heart, so we cannot fix our heart. If all of these
things come from the heart that is within, then we need a heart that is outside
of us. There is only one place left to turn: to the Great Physician Himself.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me
not away from your presence and take not Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me
the joy of your salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit.”
When
Jesus hears these words of confession, His heart leaps for joy. This is what
Jesus came to do – to bind up the broken-hearted and forgive the penitent heart.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God,
you will not despise,” the Psalmist prayed (Ps 51:17). Christ’s heart was
broken and crushed for our sins; His sinless heart died for our sin-choked
hearts; His lifeless heart was buried in the tomb. God accepted Christ’s sacrifice
of His heart for us, and Easter morning, Jesus heart beat a strong, steady
tatoo of life. The heartbeat was so strong it shook the ground and knocked open
the graves of many of the faithful.
This
is what our Lord does: He gives us His heart. His heart is pure, holy and
sinless, without any hateful congestion. His heart is filled with compassion
and mercy, not having any envy or coveting. This heart of Christ, filled with
love, is placed into you, and it beats next to the heart of the old man. The
heartbeat of Christ is strong and powerful, overwhelming the old man. Your
heart – your physical, mental, and spiritual entirety – beats with the heart of
Christ within you.
What
do we do with our new heart? We guard it and protect it by avoiding places that
poison the heart. We keep our heart
humble by confessing the heart-attacking temptations we fail to avoid. We take our heart medicine by hearing Christ’s
Word of forgiveness. We strengthen our heart by receiving Christ’s own body and
blood. And then we exercise our heart by
letting the heart-beat of Christ dwell in you and through you to those around
you, that they may see Christ in what you say and do.
This
side of heaven, we will always struggle with our hearts, because that old heart
still lies within us. But, even as we struggle, we look forward to the day of
our own Easter resurrection when our hearts will beat only with the rhythm of
Christ’s. On that last day, the day of the resurrection of all flesh, Christ’s
heartbeat will again open the graves of the faithful. Our hearts will beat in
unison with His. On that day, all sorrow and sighing will stop, all
heart-attacking temptations will cease, and the heart disease of sin will be no
more. On that day, the Beatitude will be complete: “Blessed are the pure in
heart, for you shall see God,” (Mt. 5:8).
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