Passions of the HeartJeremiah 17:5-10 Thus says the Sovereign: "Cursed are those who trust in human beings and make the arm of flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from God. They are like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. They shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in God, whose trust is God. They are like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? "I the Sovereign search the mind and try the heart, to give to everyone according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings." I have always loved Saint Valentine's Day. From little on – remember those boxes you made for Valentines Day in grade school? You decorated your box – put a slot in the top..... That was such a day of great suspense – and a day of PERIL!? Sitting there at my desk in school before the valentine cards were given out.....I was in a state of DREAD....true EXISTENTIAL ANGST, that I might not get one from whoever at the moment had captured my heart! There was also that fear that I would get one from someone I hadn't sent one to.... Who is the patron saint of St. Valentine's Day? The patron saint of Valentine's Day could be one of a few saints, because Catholicism recognizes at least three saints with the name Valentine or Valentinus. One Valentine was a priest in Rome during the third century at a time when Emperor Claudius II banned weddings so as to keep his soldiers single. This Valentine, the story goes, made his mark performing weddings for secret lovers until he was found out and sentenced to death on Feb. 14. Meantime, it is said that another Valentine, during the same time period, was the bishop of modern-day Terni. A third was in Africa, though details (including a time frame) of his demise are unclear. What is certain, however, is that all three were viewed as martyrs. And somehow, through the years, at least one of their deaths spawned flowers, boxes of chocolate and mushy greeting cards. When I look back to Valentine's Day, that celebration of the heart was a training ground for the rest of my life. It provided the opportunity to think about the person I wanted to give my heart to......and now as the years have gone on, I think of it as a day to thank God that I have a heart, one that can give and receive love and bring love into the world. In the light of this, what is your reaction when I read from Jeremiah? These are the verses that are the basis for our thoughts this morning.....The prophet Jeremiah says the following about the human heart.... "Cursed are those who trust in human beings and make the arm of flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from God." "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?" "I the Sovereign search the mind and try the heart, to give to everyone according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings." AND a Happy Valentine's Day to you too, Jeremiah! I wouldn't look for these lines from Jeremiah to be quoted in next year's Hallmark or Gibson Valentine cards...... But, as strange as it may seem, when you scratch a little below the surface, they are pretty good sayings for Valentine's Day. First of all, we must remember that the Bible is a love story. It is about God's love for everything God made, all creatures of the sky and sea and earth. And it is especially the story of God's love for those creatures made in the divine image. But from early on in God's Love Story, there has been relationship problems.....accusations of hardened hearts, possessiveness, jealousy, and the wandering eye, trollaping around with other gods (small g)...... God chose prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah and Deborah and so many others, as GO-BETWEENS, serving as spokespersons of GOD'S HEART.....again and again and again these prophets were sent to speak GOD'S HEART to the chosen people of Israel. BUT – God's people tended to put their trust and their HEARTS in political alliances with foreign powers, or even in the gods of other nations, with names like Baal or Moloch. God's people were fickle, disloyal, unfaithful with a wandering eye.....Looking for LOVE in ALL the Wrong Places! And so Jeremiah states: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?" "I the Sovereign search the mind and try the heart..." Ouch – that really hurts! In the UCC – we certainly avoid talk that states the heart is deceitful – desperately corrupt.....that sounds too much like "sinful"... But the truth of the matters is that the heart's motives are known only to God – I can't determine your motives and you can't determine my motives – we can talk about our motives – but only God knows the TRUTH of our motives – and actually, that is quite comforting, isn't it? To understand this passage – we really need to understand the Hebrew understanding of the "HEART".... The Heart, according to Hebrew culture, was the SEAT of One's will, the SEAT of one's understanding, the SEAT of one's emotions. What does that say to YOU? How would you define the heart – it is what makes us us! The hearts slippery, shifty ways go undetected even to the one to whom the heart belongs......God asks for the heart, yet our greatest failures as women and men, as human beings, come from the heart. Our hearts, the seat of our will, the seat of our understanding, the seat of our emotions, confess trust in God, to be followers of Jesus, but then our hearts negotiate and gamble with other loves, or what the Old Testament prophets call, idols. Our hearts call on the name of God, but then it refuses to follow God's plan, to live in love, peace, justice and mercy. We all know how jealous, fickle, untrusting our hearts can be when it comes to romantic love – how one minute we are falling in love and the next we are falling out of love – how one minute we are packing up everything we own and moving in and the next the u-haul is curb side and we are cramming all our belongings back in and moving on.....and along with the prophet we throw up our hands in exasperation, as many of us do when our hearts betray us, and say; So....the questions is.....WHO THE HECK CAN UNDERSTAND THE HEART? Who can understand the seat of our emotions...the seat of our wills....the seat of our understanding? All one needs to do to understand how hard it is to understand the human heart is look at what has been all over the news this week.... Lisa Marie Nowak – Astronaut! What kind of love motivated her to drive over 1000 miles straight – wearing a diaper so she would not need to stop to even relieve herself – to, it appears – murder or at least frighten the "other woman" in a love triangle with a fellow astronaut? And Lisa has only been divorced for a little over 3 weeks.....? Talk about crimes of the heart!? Talk about how obsessed the human heart can become..... The question I have this morning – is can you and I really understand TRUE, REAL, AUTHENTIC LOVE apart from knowing and understanding the unconditional LOVE of GOD!? Erich Fromm said of love.... Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." In essence – our love for God is infantile, immature, a child-like love – because it says..... "I LOVE YOU, GOD, BECAUSE I AM LOVED by YOU FIRST" and "I LOVE YOU BECAUSE I NEED YOU, GOD". So God calls for our hearts....I love the two illustrations in this passage from Jeremiah.... Both illustrations of our hearts, our hearts and lives as compared to trees..... The first is the cursed tree..... "Cursed are those who trust in human beings and make the arm of flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from God. They are like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. They shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land." The individual whose heart doesn't beat for God – is like a spindly, dried up shrub..... How many of you have been to the Great Salt Sea outside Salt Lake City, Utah? Imagine a tree attempting to grow in that soil!? That illustrates those whose hearts don't beat, aren't inclined toward God. The second is the blessed tree.... "Blessed are those who trust in God, whose trust is God. They are like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." The individual who's heart beats for God – is inclined toward God has great roots, is well nourished, is full of green leaves and can weather any drought....and in fact....it bears wonderful, luscious fruit all year long! Those who have hearts that beat for God bear wonderful, luscious, juicy fruit day in and day out...... A day to thing about love.....when is the last time you said "I LOVE YOU" to God? The founder of the REDEMPTORISTS, SAINT ALPHONSUS DE LIGUORI, was a passionate Italian monk who came to recognize that God was a passionate God, crazy in love with us. And God wants us to know this, so he sent Jesus.....who lived the kind of love that God has for us....radical love that doesn't count the cost! And in return – God asks for our love, love from our fickle hearts, love yesterday, today, and always.... But God also wants OUR HEARTS to go out to all of creation; especially those in need....that would be the fruit coming forth from the healthy tree planted by the river.... Our hearts go out to the poor, the hungry, the rejected, the abused, the misunderstood, those who are hated, those who are excluded, the marginalized....and not just our hearts going out to them BUT actually working with and for them! Our hearts must go out to others as the heart of our God does.....our hearts go out to those who need a loving heart. And as our hearts go out to others – it as if our heart goes out to God..... God's heart is beating for you.....does your heart beat for God? Is it like a tree planted in the beautiful garden – thirsting for nourishment from its creator? |