Lent- A Change of Heart
Romans 7: 13-25
March 3, 1991
Today we gather to celebrate the cessation of hostilities in the Middle East. We give thanks for the beginnings of peace in that troubled part of the globe. Quite rightly, we uttered A collective sigh of relief as we received the news, but even as we give thanks we were warned that peace was more difficult, more elusive, than simply stopping the armed hostilities.
My contention, this morning is that what is needed in the Middle East is basically what is needed for each of us, heart surgery. Heart surgery is what lent is all about. It’s the time of the year when the church asks us to become aware of our need for radical change. It’s the time of the year when we’re asked to learn to love with our hearts, and to unlearn the hatred in our minds. It’s a time of the year when we become painfully aware of the diseases of the heart, the diseases that lead to enmity, estrangement and, sometimes war.
The heart is a powerful metaphor for what we are about this length. Medically we are reminded about failures, and bypasses, and transplants. Figuratively, we are asked to give from the heart or simply to have a heart. In literature the heart is considered the center of the self, the very center of awareness. In art, it’s the very symbol of devotion and love.
But in the spiritual writers the heart is recognized as a place of conflict, the place where desire and will fight it out. The place where we first become aware that we need some radical heart surgery, or maybe even a heart replacement if we are ever to truly gain the fruit of the spirit that is peace in the inner person.
So on this third Sunday of lent, I asked you to think seriously about your hearts, and rather if you or, or this country, or this world, might need some heart surgery.
In our epistle, this morning from the pen of Saint Paul, that we have some startling insight into the inner workings of our hearts. Paul reminds us of our confusing and contradictory nature. He points out that we are often desire one thing and find ourselves doing something entirely different. This dysfunctional behavior is often the reason we are aware, painfully aware, of a need for heart surgery
Saint Paul, and his spiritual sensitivity, cries out, with yearning and longing a heart rending plea, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? What then, is the disease with which Paul is afflicted, to which each of us is also mysteriously bound? What then, at least three heart diseases from which we suffer.
The first is a weakness of heart where we lose sight of what could be, what a hair transplant might feel like and we settle for what is. There are many people today, they usually call themselves realists, you have lost sight of any possibilities. They have adjusted with their situations, and never seek for something more. Or the realists say ohh well there’s always been conflict in that region. The best we can hope for is another spot of peace. Or in this country they say, the homeless we’ve always had them we always will period of their own lives they say I may not be perfect, but I’m the best possible need. It’s a weakness that looks at what is and not what could be.
The second disease is a loss of heart. Where somehow we tried, been disappointed and disillusioned, and lost the courage to continue. Many with this disease have chosen the path of distraction and avoidance where they lack the courage to press towards awareness which is painful and difficult. Who wants to find himself on his knees saying, O wretched man that I am? Who wants to go through the agony of confronting himself and seeing how far he has fallen from his potential? As one writer has said, I don’t mind you telling me my faults, they’re stale, but don’t tell me my virtues. When you tell me what I could be it terrifies me. And we so lose heart, give up, lack courage, become terrified.
And lastly, we often suffer from a hardness of heart. This disease is the most spiritually deadly as well as the most common. Hardness of heart means you are aware, but you blame others for your condition. Resentment, enmity, and suspicion are three of the most common feelings that arise from hardness of heart, and those afflicted with this disease often band together to form groups of happy haters. Hardness of heart leads us into paranoia. I’m not talking of paranoia as used in clinical language, but rather in its original meaning, paranoia is separation from oneself, anger and blaming those about you, enemy-making, seeing the world as people by strangers.
In Christian vocabulary, the opposite of paranoia is metanoia. Metanoia means turning around, making friends with the world, a softening of the heart. Or maybe a heart replacement period, somehow we’ve lost the word in our common usage. We don’t say ohh he’s mechanoid the way we are quick to say 1 is paranoid. I wonder if that’s because we don’t see many change of heart. For most of us we seem stuck with the same old disease. Life goes on pretty much as is, we seem to repeat the same old stories.
Lent reminds us of a different story. Our hearts can be changed. We need not be stuck with simply saying a wretched man that I am. Our stories need not end with estrangement, suspicion, and paranoia if we can admit our contradictions and still go on to find that God loves us. There’s a sad story about a young man who went to a new therapist he’d been going to therapy for many years, and he thought of himself as psychologically incurable. Give him some comfort and status or he saw himself as being unreachable.
He might not have been otherwise, but at least he was unique; he was incurable. The new therapist annoyed him and made him uncomfortable by saying well for me you’re a new case and I don’t believe you are as sick as you believe you are. Let’s begin today. This therapist would not accept the web he had made for himself. She cut him off from the old story that supported his life. She was saying in effect the old heart could be replaced. Heart surgery was a possibility. The depressing part of the story is that the young man never came back. But that’s the story of one young man and need not be your story. At the beginning of the Lenten season, we’ve talked quite a bit about giving up of something as a spiritual discipline. Today I would suggest you’re giving up the notion that you’re incurable, that you can’t have a change of heart, that metanoia is not possible. Listen good people, can you hear the voice of God saying to you I don’t believe your version of yourself I don’t believe the last word is that you are a wretched person. Beginning today to believe heart surgery is possible. Heart-to-heart resuscitation is a part of the Lenten love story which tells us who we are and shows that God is waiting for us to change.
Saint Augustine said when he Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. Peace, cessation of hostilities, and the end to war and killing, it’s wonderful. But what is even more wonderful is that we all can have a change of heart, that God’s spirit can lead us into peace, that we can become new persons in Christ.
There’s a wonderful prayer and one of Fred Butcher’s books. St. Cuthbert prays that Godric may see himself as a new person. The prayer goes like this, thou who art the sparrow’s friend, have mercy on this world that knows not even when its sins. Oh holy dove descend it last and roost on Godrick here that his heart may hatch in him at last.
Imagine this lent, the hatching of a new heart in you and each of us becoming metalloid so that enemies become friends, strangers become sisters and brothers, and our small world has a taste of reconciliation.
Amen