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Wesleyan theology is, at the heart, a
matter of the heart. John Wesley referred to the Methodist
experience as “heart religion,” and the spirit of
Charles Wesley’s music goes right to the nurturing of the
heart, the depth of the heart in relation to God, the
healing of the heart.
1. First, the diagnosis. Let’s call
it spiritual cardiomyopathy, the hard heart.
Cardiomyopathy—the muscles lose their
ability to relax and contract, become stiff and brittle,
literally a “hard heart.” I know a little bit about
cardiomyopathy, a little too close for comfort, actually.
For my twin brother, Jim, the diagnosis came as a bit of a
shock, though he says he should have seen the signs coming:
-
on the morning he was
jogging on the Tampa Bay boulevard and had to sit down
at a bus stop because he couldn’t catch his breath
-
in the unusual
heartbeat which he simply blamed on too much coffee
-
finally, at the
meeting with the cardiologist who said, “To the hospital
immediately, don’t pass go, don’t collect $200!”
And the
diagnosis…cardiomyopathy, a hard heart.
The fact is, it is not just a medical
diagnosis, but it’s a spiritual issue, as well. Literally it
is a biblical term. The Bible says that when the Israelites
were in bondage in Egypt, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and
Ezekiel describes the people and their “hearts of stone.” In
the New Testament, Peter’s preaching ends with the
invitation to “harden not your hearts” to the message
of God’s grace. It’s all a matter of the heart—spiritual
cardiomyopathy, the hard heart.
Hardness of heart seems to be an epidemic right now. And in
some ways, I can understand it.
I get to the point that I don’t even want
to watch the news anymore. I feel like there are times when
I need to “harden my heart” just to get by. I can’t handle
all the violence and brutality of the world. But every once
in a while, I know I need to allow the pain to break through
so that I can stay in touch with the needs of others, the
pain of the world:
-
Like our youth,
coming home from Ghana with a new sensitivity to joys
and sorrows, the difficulties and the strength of our
brothers and sisters in Africa.
-
Like volunteers at
Cass in Detroit or our summer interns at Baldwin Center
in Pontiac, staying in touch with the needs of others.
-
Like S.O.S. teams
making a home for the homeless right here in our
building, and all of a sudden, homelessness has a face
and a name and a story.
Even when it is a necessary defense
against the agony of our world, spiritual cardiomyopathy is
a sure course toward spiritual death, and it needs to be
dealt with.
2. If hardness of heart is the diagnosis, the prescription
is open heart surgery.
Every once in a while, we need to open
our hearts and let the world in, just to avoid spiritual
cardiomyopathy, the hardening of heart.
I remember the story of an inner city
pastor who was leading a visitor through the church on the
day when they were feeding homeless men in the dining hall.
The guests were lined up in the hallway waiting for lunch as
the pastor led the visitor through the building, introducing
her to some of the men. He said, “We are in the business of
saving souls here.”
And the
woman, looking at the disheveled men, said, “Oh, I can see
that. They certainly need it.”
And the
pastor responded, “No, not their souls, I mean our
souls”…from hardness of heart.
When my brother was diagnosed with
cardiomyopathy, the doctor told him that patients usually
either have open heart surgery or they die. And it’s true
for the church, too…we either have open heart surgery or we
die. Without that openness to others, restricted arteries
will block the flow. Without a compassion for the world, a
narrowness of heart constricts and weakens us. The choice is
an open heart or a hardened heart.
Dare I
repeat the motto we have proclaimed to the world?
Open hearts. Opens minds. Open doors.
The People of the United Methodist
Church.
It is meant to describe to the world who
we say we are, what we say we believe, how we intend to live
in the world: with an open heart, open to feelings of
others, open to the needs of the world.
E. Stanley Jones was probably the
greatest missionary of the Methodist movement. He was
converted in a Methodist church in New Jersey. He says he
went forward that night in response to an invitation and
knelt at the altar rail in his home church. The pastor
prayed with him. He later wrote in his autobiography: “When
I rose from the altar, I wanted to put my arms around the
world and share what I had experienced…and I have spent the
rest of my life doing just that.”
Open
heart surgery. That’s what it takes, and that’s what God has
in mind for each of us.
Well, back to my brother, Jim. A couple
of years after his bout with cardiomyopathy, he went back
for a check-up and his heart was fine. When he thanked the
doctor for saving his life, the cardiologist responded,
“You’d better thank all those people who prayed for you,
because I am not sure anything we tried did much good.” Jim
writes:
It’s miraculous, and it’s all very
humbling. God healed my heart of stone and renewed within me
a heart of flesh. Ten years later, this skinny body is in
about the best shape it’s ever been. I walk on the Bay Shore
three times a week and go see my cardiologist once a year,
just for old time’s sake.
Then he
draws the comparison with Hyde Park Church:
I had no way of knowing at the time that
what had happened to my heart would be a human analogy to
what would happen in our congregation. The changes in store
for us involved more than just tinkering around the edges of
our life together. The transformation God had in mind would
go all the way to the heart of our identity.
(James A. Harnish, You Only Have to
Die, page 24)
He
calls it “congregational cardiomyopathy”:
...an ecclesiastical version of the
medical condition that hardens the heart so that it is no
longer able to function; it’s the lack of heart-level
clarity and warm-hearted passion about God’s mission and
vision for the church.
(Harnish, You Only have to Die,
page 40)
And it calls for nothing short of open
heart surgery, going all the way to the center of our lives,
to the heart of the matter, opening our hearts to the spirit
of Christ and his compassion for the world. That’s the kind
of radical heart surgery God has in mind for each of us.
Well,
if the diagnosis is spiritual cardiomyopathy, hardness of
heart, and the prescription is open heart
surgery…
3. The outcome is a clean heart, a pure heart—in fact, a
heart transplant, a new heart.
In the
words of the prophet Ezekiel:
A new
heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within
you; and I will take out the heart of stone and give you a
heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you.
(Ezekiel 36:26)
That’s the answer, isn’t it? Call it new
birth, call it conversion, call it salvation—it’s the gift
of a new heart, a new spirit within.
For John Wesley, it happened on May 24,
1738. He and Brother Charles had come on a mission trip to
the Georgia colony. But it was a total failure, and he
returned to England, writing in his journal:
In my return to England in January 1738,
I was strongly convinced that the uneasiness I felt was
unbelief, and that gaining a true, living faith was the one
thing needful for me. I went to America to convert the
Indians, but oh, who will convert me?
He says he continued to seek it, “…though
with strange indifference, dullness and coldness.” Sounds
like hardness of heart, perhaps? Until May 24. Again, in his
journal he records that in his morning prayers he read from
the scriptures: “Thou art not far from the kingdom.” In the
afternoon he went to evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral and
heard the choir sing “Out of the Depth I Cry to Thee, O
Lord”….which pretty much described how he felt. Then that
evening he records:
I went very unwillingly to a society in
Aldersgate Street where one was reading from Luther’s
Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before
nine, while he was describing the change which God works in
the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely
warmed. I knew that I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for
my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had
taken away my sins, even mine, and freed me from the law of
sin and death.
If you go into the Runkel Chapel, you
will see in the stained glass windows a clock with its hands
set at 8:45—a quarter before nine. For John Wesley, that was
the moment of his open heart surgery, a heart strangely
warmed—in fact, a new heart.
And, of
course, Brother Charles Wesley would put it to song:
O for a heart to praise my God,
a heart from sin set free.
A heart that always feels thy blood
so freely shed for me.
A heart in every thought renewed
and full of love divine.
Perfect and right and pure and good,
a copy, Lord, of thine.
(U.M.
Hymnal, page 417)
If hardness of heart is the diagnosis and
open heart surgery is the cure, then a heart strangely
warmed, a new heart, is the result.
And that brings us to the text for the morning, Psalm 51.
It
begins with that cryptic note at the top. In incredible
understatement it reads:
A Psalm of David, when the Prophet
Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
Oh...Bathsheba. You remember the story.
David saw her on the rooftop. David wanted her, and he was
the king, after all, so David got her. She became pregnant.
David tried to get her soldier husband home from the
battlefield for some R&R, thinking that would cover his sin,
that the child to be born would be thought to be his and not
David’s.
When that didn’t work, he plotted for the
death of her husband on the field of battle. And when the
prophet Nathan came to him, disclosing the whole sorry,
sordid story in all its ugly detail, David had to face his
sin and own up to the truth about himself. He realized his
need of radical heart surgery, and he cried out:
Have mercy on me, O Lord, according to
thy steadfast love.
According to thy abundant mercy,
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within
me.
(Psalm 51)
Create a new spirit in us. Give us an
open heart, a new heart, a clean heart, a pure heart. Do the
work in us.
Notes: If you would like to read the full
account of my brother’s experience with cardio-myopathy and
the new life at Hyde Park Church, his book is entitled
You Only Have To Die. You can order it from our virtual
bookstore at www.fumcbirmingham.org or purchase it in the
Circuit Rider Bookstore.
Also, I mentioned E. Stanley Jones. His
autobiography, A Song of Ascents, and a recent
biography by Stephen Graham, Ordinary Man, Extraordinary
Mission, are available from our virtual bookstore at
www.fumcbirmingham.org. |
