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Sermons at Saint Mary's
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost: “Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name.” A few months ago, I had a very close encounter with my heart. On a routine doctor’s visit, my EKG showed I had an anomaly in one of my cardiac quadrants. And so, I was rather unceremoniously sent over to the heart center in Hyannis for further study. Boy, did I get the royal treatment! Stress test, ultrasound, echo cardiagram, you name it. As it turns out, nothing was wrong, and after three days of anxiety, all I got in the bargain was elevated blood pressure! This little medical excursion, however, got me thinking. About my heart, and what the heart really is in all of its wonder and mystery. At the heart center, each time I looked on with cardiologist and med techs at the screen at that pulsating, breathing muscle in my chest, I thought about all the ways my heart functions in my life: as the source of my physical body, as the seat of my emotions, as most of all, as the spring of my will and spiritual being. For this, ultimately, is what the heart is and has always been in human memory: the innermost fountain of our life, that part of us that plumbs the mystery of our lives and the life of the divine. And, this, I think, is where our lessons from the Letter of James and the Gospel of Mark are taking us today. In the direction of our hearts: to that place inside us where we wrestle with our inner demons and our better angels. To those recesses in us where we harbor our deepest thoughts and plans and attitudes, and feelings and hopes and fears. Holy Scripture, itself, references the heart frequently. In fact, it is one of the most common words we find in the entirety of the Bible, mentioned 925 times in all. In the great commandment, we are told to love the Lord our God with our heart and mind and soul. Jesus said “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Religion, for Jesus, is a matter of the heart. And this explains his argument with the Pharisees in our Gospel today. The Pharisees, you see, were not bad people. To the contrary, they lived exemplary lives, much like you and me. But their tendency was to base their goodness on their exterior behavior. As long as they were living by the letter of the law, they were abiding by its spirit. As long as they gave the appearance of being good, they could stand above those they considered to be evil. And so they took umbrage at the disciples of Jesus who did not wash their hands before they ate. They took offence that they would have the audacity to not practice religion as it is meant to be practiced. Over against this, Jesus recited these ancient words of the prophet Isaiah: “The people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” And these words of Isaiah were based on the even older, familiar ones of I Samuel that “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but God looketh upon the heart.” Nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, Jesus says. Rather it is the things that are in a person, in their hearts, these are the things that defile a person. The Letter of James makes the same point. Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, the Letter commands. For it is the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. Those who only hear and do not do are like those who look into a mirror and immediately forget what they look like. They practice false religion. The province of true religion, James said, is internal. It is in knowing our hearts that we come into full possession of our souls. And this involves ridding our hearts of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness. It involves welcoming with meekness the movement of God in our hearts. In his Beatitudes, Jesus said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Many centuries later, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote: “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” Our lessons today come to us as an invitation to examine our own hearts. And when we turn in our hearts, what is it that we find there? Are our hearts divided? Are they conflicted? Are they burdened by resentment or fear or anxiety? Are our hearts hard and brittle from being broken or beaten down or neglected? Can we invite into our hearts the healing balm that God desires for us? Can we really have our hearts transformed to will one thing? Can our hearts be pure again? If we have doubts about this, if we think it is too late, or we are too far from God’s grace, or even if we are simply content to live with our broken, divided hearts, even if we would rather remain bitter and stunted and self-absorbed in our hearts, then I would ask you, in closing, to consider one last time the person who we all had to come to terms with this past week, whether you were one of his big fans in this life, or one of his detractors. I would ask you to consider the heart of Teddy Kennedy. For Teddy Kennedy had a heart just like you and me. It was a heart containing light and darkness, peace and conflict, just like yours and mine. And Lord knows Teddy Kennedy wrestled hard with his heart on his earthly sojourn. He had a heart broken so many times in so many places, it defies comprehension. The flaws his heart contained caused him to do some things that were reprehensible, yet who of us here today is blameless in this regard?. Late in his life, something happened to Teddy Kennedy. He began to look into his own heart, and he began to face the darkness and pain and sordidness that lurked in those recesses of his inner being. I believe in that very self-recognition he began to see the divine spark that is within each of us. I believe he began to will one thing. I believe, at the time of his death, his heart was pure. And what about you? Here’s what I believe: if our hearts are truly open and receptive, they too can become pure and whole again. For in the end, this is all God asks of us: God asks for our hearts, so that love can be grafted there, and there, in our hearts, the implanted word will save our souls. top | home | site index |
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