In our readings this morning the heart is mentioned
three times. The Jerusalem crowd on the
day of Pentecost seeing and hearing the promised Holy Spirit being poured out
upon the disciples of Jesus realized they had missed the mark and they were cut
to the heart by it. Two disciples on
Easter morning not knowing they were in the presence of Jesus raised. Their hearts were burning within them as this
Beloved Stranger explained the scriptures to them. Finally, Peter writing to encourage many
churches throughout what is today Turkey who were being persecuted for
expressing the genuine mutual love they had in them as result of the Holy
Spirit’s work. He tells them to love deeply
from the heart. The next three weeks we
are going to look at each one of these heart conditions. Today we’ll look a bit at being cut to the
heart.
The thing about a heart condition is that too often
you don’t know you have it and what symptoms you do have can be easily
explained away. That fluttering and
leaping sensation is just a tummy spasm.
The lite-headedness is from sitting too long. I don’t have the energy I
used to because I’m getting older.
“Whew. Let me catch my breath…but
I’m just standing here.”
A heart condition can also really affect your
drive. You pushing yourself to get
things done. You want to do things, but…maybe tomorrow. It’s quite like the motivational problems
that arise with depression. Everything
requires more effort than it should.
While we’re on the topic of the heart and drive, in
the Bible the heart is the chief organ of human life, the centre of vitality. The Hebrews believed that the blood held the
life of a person and the heart pumped that life through the body. More metaphorically, the heart is the seat of
your drive. You’re passion.
Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart
will be also (Lk. 12:34).” But wait,
treasure sounds like pleasure, or that’s the way the heart’s sin-sick buddy the
mind makes it sound and, therefore following your heart is not always the best
advice to heed. The heart’s drive for
what it treasures can deceive. The LORD
spoke through Jeremiah saying, “The heart is deceitful above all things and
beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Je.
17:9).”
Fortunately, God promises us a new heart. Through Ezekiel he promised, “I will give you
a new heart and put a new Spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of
stone and give you a heart of flesh (Ez. 36:26).” Since Pentecost, we have had a taste of that
promise fulfilled in us in Christ by the gift of Holy Spirit who works within
us changing our hearts and minds to be more like Jesus.
But back to the heart being the seat of our drive,
our passion. As I said following the
heart can be misleading because the heart can be wrongly impassioned. Similarly, the heart can loose its
passion. You hear this with
athletes. They played the game so well
for so long. It was their passion. Anytime, anywhere, they’d play. But then, it’s not that something happened. It’s just their hearts aren’t in it
anymore. They’ll finish the season, but
don’t expect them to do more than just show up. Their hearts are rekindled with passion.
Congregations can get to the point of where their
hearts just aren’t in it and will start to show evidence of a heart condition. We show up, but that’s about it. Many Psalms encourage us to “serve the Lord
with our whole hearts”, but…“Meh. I think
I’ll just sit here. My heart is just not in it.
Another fundraiser. Another
meeting. Another anniversary. Meh.” The passion is just not there anymore. Church is a duty, an obligation among
many,…and wouldn’t we just love a break from it. But, that’s like quitting on God.
I think the root cause of this congregational heart condition is
that passion for the church took the place of passion for the Lord. You see, rightly impassioned hearts, hearts
impassioned for the Lord, will be passionate about knowing him and serving him
no matter what form of ministry that takes.
If we lose our passion with respect to the church, it is likely because
Jesus is trying to get our hearts to burn with passion, to be impassioned for
him. The end result of hearts turned
back to Jesus is usually a new way of being the people of God, a new way of
being the church in which our passion is to love God, our neighbours, each
other, and ourselves more deeply from the heart; a new way of being the church
in this world that will be more in tune with the times.
Back when I was a kid I watched a TV show called The
Land of the Lost. It was about a father,
son, and daughter going rafting down this “unexplored river”. But they get either go over a waterfall or
get sucked into a whirlpool and somehow wind up in this absolutely beautiful
place with plant species and animals that have been extinct for millions of
years. They think they’ve found
Paradise…that is until the T. Rex shows up.
The 80’s and 90’s was the end of the era of when
non-churched people got on the raft and came to church because there was a
cultural message that impressed upon them that people needed to come to church
to find God and “peace”. They came and often
found something really special…the presence of the Lord in the midst of good
people who cared about them. But, these
church people were a people lost in time and it didn’t take long for the T. Rex
to show. The vicious carnivore of “the
institutional church” embodying our idols of “what churches do” and this is “the
way we’ve always done it” hounded them and guilted into doing things they
didn’t know how to do and criticized the mistakes. Instead of hearts burning with passion as they
felt Jesus speaking to them through the Scriptures these newcomers found
themselves being chased into a cave by a dinosaur that kill and ate their
spirits. These T. Rex churches are still
around today and are the ones where you can’t get anybody out for a Bible Study
and they are beginning to fight about or just say “meh” to the all the things
they have to do to stay afloat…and it is really rare that anybody just shows
up. Sound familiar?
We need to be cut to the heart as our Acts passage
says. Cut to the heart…this is what happens when we realize our hearts have
been otherwise or wrongly impassioned. The
Jerusalem Jews realized how far off the mark they had been about Jesus and what
the LORD God was doing in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth. The Lord was doing something new in their
midst, but they couldn’t see it due to their wrongly impassioned hearts. Instead of just saying, “meh…I think I’ll
just watch.” They tried to kill this new
thing. When God came to the people of
God with a new revelation of himself, the people of God killed him and
persecuted those who followed him.
Yet, because of the work of the Holy Spirit in their
midst that day, the people there in Jerusalem realized that Jesus was truly their
Lord and Messiah but they had indeed crucified him. They realized this and they were cut to the
heart. They were remorseful, fearing the
punishment they knew they deserved, needing to sit in holy silence before the
Lord, felt lost, stung, humbled, indignant with themselves at what they had
done. So they ask the Disciples
“Brothers, what can we do?”
Peter answers basically repent and receive the Holy
Spirit. The Greek word for “repent”
literally means to change your thinking, to change your mindedness. We need to commit ourselves fully to discovering
and getting onboard with what Jesus is doing in our midst rather than just
doing church according to the idols of what we believe churches are supposed to
do and doing things the ways we’ve always done them. We’ve got an awesome opportunity with this
Coop. We really do. God is doing a new thing here…right here. But are we passionate about it. Our hearts need to burn within us and I’ll
get to that next week. But for now, I
ask this question to each one of us, “What is the condition of your heart?” Are you impassioned for the Lord? Or, are our hearts just not in it? Are we saying “meh” and in so doing stifling
the Spirit’s work in our midst? Pray
about that this week? Amen.
