Spiritual Surgery? New Hearts!
The Rev. Linda McConnell
So on this 5th and last Sunday of Lent, we hear incredibly good news of hope from the great prophet Jeremiah. A hope that is so profound and of such great consequence that I want us to really hear it and take it in. I promise it will give you renewed energy and confidence in the future.
God is going to fundamentally change our human condition – is going to come so close to us as to perform spiritual surgery – give us hearts of flesh in place of our hearts of stone. Ezekiel, another of the great prophets, also foretold, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”
I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my ways – to do love, in other words. To do what Jesus taught – to love God and our neighbors and ourselves – in the same way that Jesus loved – with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with our very flesh and blood.
We need clean hearts. We need our spirits renewed. And we need joy and gladness that isn’t a pipe dream but that is based on firm ground. entirely reasonable because of the firm ground upon which it is based. We need the hope of a joy and gladness that no power on earth, no action or inaction of Congress, no weird judgements of the Supreme Court or deluge of misinformation, war or personal tragedies, that no power on earth or under the earth or in heaven can shake.
Right? We need that.
I used to enjoy dramas on Netflix – but I find that I just can’t take much darkness anymore. So I’ve gone back to an old detective series set in San Francisco – called Monk. It follows a formula – Adrian Monk always solves the case – usually within the last 6 or so minutes. You know that no one is going to get seriously hurt – other than the murder victim that is the set up for the mystery. Monk is sweetly but seriously obsessive compulsive and a bit paranoid – but the theme song makes it clear that his OCD and paranoia are justified:
People think I’m crazy, ’cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you’d be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world you love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don’t think so
‘Cause it’s a jungle out there
It’s a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion – brother against brother – taps on our phones with mics and cameras checking out everything we do – if you let yourself, it would be relatively easy to adopt Monk’s mindset –
But we don’t have to fall into this or remain under this continuous low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. There is a hope that is grounded in a very different reality – and that is the ultimate triumphant power of God to bring goodness and order out of violence and danger. I still enjoy Monk – but in my actual life, I’m putting my money on the ultimate power of God that is unerringly bent towards our redemption and setting to rights the wellbeing of the entire creation.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Our hope isn’t dependent on human judgement or progress or perfection – although we should always be working towards becoming better people and building better societies. But if you’ve lived for several decades you have come to realize that we don’t actually have, as a human race, the will power to do what it takes to live together in peace and harmony. Jesus called it when he said that the poor – and the suffering of the poor – will always be with you… still he said, it is your duty to clothe the naked and feed the hungry and do all that you can to reduce suffering.
But our hope? Our hope is grounded on nothing less than God’s affirmation that He himself will come among us and exchange these wayward hearts and this flabby willpower of ours with his own heart and his own will. That God himself will implant within us both the will and the way, the power to both intend and to accomplish love and goodwill towards all. =
In the words of Edward Griffin, an American preacher from the early 1800’s, “The work is all the Lord’s, undertaken for his own glory, undertaken from love inexhaustible and invincible, and as the Lord liveth it will be accomplished.”
This, my friends, is the foundation of human hope. That God’s agency on behalf of creation is ultimate, it is inexhaustible and invincible, and it is bent on setting to rights the whole planetary system of interbeing – the animals, plants, soil, water, air, humans.
It is within our power to imagine a world like this – and it is within our sphere to work towards a world like this – but thank God, it is God’s will and power that will ultimately ensure its success.
Imagine all the people, John Lennon wrote in one of my favorite hymns – imagine all the people, Living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
This hope, this dream, is worldwide. It is within all of us because to live as one is our divine destiny –
But since Adam, we have lived in estrangement – from animals, from each other, from the divine.
And God has made successive covenants to help us come closer to that oneness that is our divine destiny –The first one signaled by the far-off rainbow in the heavens – that beautiful ark of light that brightens the skies after a rain and that has come to mean a light filled tolerance and celebration of difference.
Then the 10 best ways to live – the 10 commandments meant to help guide the people towards freedom and happiness, commandments that are surely meant for not only our good but the good of the whole society. I mean just to take one – Honor the Sabbath. Think what a profound difference it would make if we were to give ourselves, and those who work for us, and the animals, and the earth are regular weekly rest. To just rest and relax for a full 24 hours. Believe me, driving on the highways for the next several days would be a different experience!
All faiths contain good commandments that are intended for human happiness and flourishing – but regardless of the faith, the truth is, commandments for good are more often broken then kept.
St. Paul in the 7th chapter of Romans lays out the problem that afflicts every human being who has ever lived: 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 2
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but my actions too often wage war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Paul is a bit dramatic for our 21st century tastes – I mean we have a lot of self-help books! And they do help. But ultimately – well just look around at the health of our planet… my grandchildren regularly report to me the state of the environment – I just learned that the snowy plover, that dear shorebird, has joined the ranks of endangered species.
Hence, my desire this morning to emphasize God’s full and decisive intention to bring about the healing of the creation.
In the next chapter of Romans, the 8th chapter, St. Paul continues with the good news of how God is going about establishing this healing – and I’m going to use the Message translation:
3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid instead of a deep healing. And now what the law asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God!
This my friends is the good news at the tail end of our Lenten journey of self-examination, fasting, and prayer. This is the good news of the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and the central mysteries of our faith: the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and Pentecost. That God is doing for us more than we could ever ask or even imagine. That God intends our health and flourishing. God intends our joy and gladness. And God has the power to bring that about.
So we do all that we can to reduce suffering, and care for our democratic institutions, and our church, and we do all that we can to make wise policy choices and financial decisions. We do all that we can to care for our children and families. And we can do so with rest and peace in our hearts because it really really really and truly is not all up to us.
“Now,” Jesus said upon the eve of his crucifixion by the hands of the Roman Empire, “now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” God accomplishes our healing and our redemption. God sets things to right.
This is the reason we can enter this last week of Lent with solemn joy and gladness – because we have this hope that is the foundation of our confidence.
