Psalm 139 and Ezekiel 36:22-28 and Acts 2:22-38
One
day back in April 2015 I was taking the lunchtime Communion service when I felt
a pain in my chest. It was severe enough to take my breath, and to prompt me to
pay a visit to my GP. She got out her stethoscope and her blood-pressure cuff
and reassured me that everything was fine…but went on to say that, at my age, I
really ought to consider doing some regular exercise. And that is how I got
into running.
There
is a theme to our readings this evening, and it is the heart.
‘Search
me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and examine my thoughts. See if there
is any way of wickedness in me and lead me in the way everlasting.’ (Psalm 139:23, 24)
‘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. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your
ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.’ (Ezekiel 36:26-28)
‘…therefore
my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope.’
(Acts 2:26)
‘Now
when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the
other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and
be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may
be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”’ (Acts 2:37, 38)
In Scripture, the heart is the seat of the will: the place from where we exercise
our will; we make choices. Those choices might be informed by our mind—the seat
of both thoughts and emotions, for the two go hand-in-hand, whatever pop-psych personality
tests might claim—and might be informed by our strength, our physical bodies—that
experience hunger or fatigue. But it is our heart that moves us, closer towards
or further away from God and neighbour. What should we do, the crowd asks Peter.
What the heart was made for: choose; repent and choose life.
God
gives us a will of our own in order that we are free; and life-giving,
life-enabling wisdom, in statutes and ordinances: the distilled life-lessons of
an entire community. But all of us have had our heart broken, one way or
another, and on many occasions. You see, a broken heart has to do with our
will. The child whose fledgling will is crushed—most likely, quite
unintentionally, and to their own mortification—by their parent. The young- or
not-so young-adult whose will is squashed by unrequited love. The
marriage-partners whose twice-shy wills must find courage to yield in mutual
submission. The parent whose child is making choices that do not lead deeper
into life in all its fullness, or at least, not as far as the parent who loves
them can see.
With
the best will in the world, our hearts become calcified over time, as we try to
protect them, only to discover that we are going through the motions, existing
rather than living.
Ezekiel’s
vision is millennia ahead of its time, for he foresees the heart transplant.
Spiritually-speaking, that is what God has done for us: removing a heart that
can no longer beat and giving us a new lease of life. Removing a will so
calcified it struggles to choose right from wrong and replacing it with a will
that is sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit—who, in Ezekiel’s
incredible vision is both internal pace-maker supporting our heart and
physiotherapist training us back to full mobility.
So
come, all those who need healing of heart.
Let
your heart be glad, and your flesh live in hope.
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