Clean Heart, Willing Spirit
Clean
Heart, Willing Spirit
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers, April 9, 2000; 5th Sunday in Lent, Year B;
Holy Communion)
Jeremiah 31:31–34 (OT, pp. 817–818);
Psalm 51:1–2, 10–12 (NT, pp. 574, 575)
Some use made of
“Sin,” The Living Pulpit,
October-December, 1999; and
Leonora Tubbs
Tisdale, in The Abingdon Women’s
Preaching Annual, Series 2, Year B, pp. 88ff.
It was nighttime, and I was in my car, stopped for a
red light, staring bleary-eyed at the bumper sticker in front of me.
“Oh, it’s that one,” I muttered wearily to myself.
“Why don’t people keep their four-letter words to themselves?”
I looked up hopefully at the traffic light—uh, still red—and then
back at the bumper, only to realize that I’d misread the sticker. Cued by its second word, I’d read the first word as the one
I’d expected to see, rather than the one that was actually there.
The second of the two words was
“happens.” But the first word was … “Grace.” “Grace
happens!”
I love the way that so-far-unique-to-my-experience
bumper sticker took a popular slogan used for shrugging off a steady stream of
bad news and converted it into a new slogan usable for announcing a steady
stream of good news! “Grace
happens!” Amen!
Yes it does!
The most famous living Lutheran theologian is no
doubt Garrison Keillor, of NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”
Keillor has observed astutely that although grace is good news for
Lutherans, it may not be for
Presbyterians, because, he says, “A
strong sense of guilt is what makes people willing to serve on committees.”
Nonetheless, despite Keillor’s Lutheran warning to
Presbyterians, I continue to affirm that in this sorry old world of sin and
sorrow grace does happen, and that that is very good news for us,
too!
But the reality of sin is as familiar to us as any day’s news broadcast:
Take, for example, the news about family members in Florida keeping a
6-year-old boy away from his loving father and making him the daily focus of
angry demonstrations. Or take, for
another example, the news about Mayor Giuliani, whose actions after the killing
of Patrick Dorismond illustrate how a person’s tragic flaw, yes, call it
“sin”—in this case, an arrogant, authoritarian demeanor—undermines and
destroys that person’s best intentions—in this case, to bring civility and
peace to the city. I attended a
meeting this week where the Reverend Michael Faulkner, an African-American
supporter of Mayor Giuliani who’s had a widely reported change of heart—I
attended a meeting where Reverend Faulkner announced:
“I pray daily that God will change my own heart; and I pray daily that
God will change the mayor’s heart. And
then I pray that if the mayor doesn’t let his
heart be changed that he be removed from office.”
The reality of sin is not only as familiar to us as our daily newscasts but it
is also as familiar to us as our daily journal entries, where, in our more
honest moments, we might note, for example, that our preoccupation with personal
well-being has led us to neglect relationships with family and friends, or where
we might record a confession that we enjoy taking advantage of society’s
prejudice in favor of persons of our gender,
race, economic class, or sexual orientation.
Yes, sin is a persistent reality of human existence and a powerful force in all
our lives. But why?
What are some of the dynamics that make sin so persistent?
Well, different thinkers have suggested different things.
For example, the 16th-century Protestant Reformer Martin Luther once described sin as “cor
curvatus in se,” the heart curving in on itself, focusing on
self-interest, rather than extending outward toward others—sin as “cor
curvatus in se,” the heart curving in on itself.
And the contemporary Roman Catholic writer William R.
Burrows has suggested that: "The
problem of sin is our inability to sustain our best intentions and live from our
deepest selves." And to
overcome our perversion of our best intentions, says Burrows, “we need to
dwell ever more consciously in the grace
of letting the God of Jesus transform us.”
I find both of these concepts helpful in examining my
own life—the concept that sin is the heart curving in on itself; and the
concept that sin is our inability to sustain our best intentions and to live
from our deepest selves.
I invite you to use these concepts in examining your own lives.
For who among us has not caused pain to a loved one through betrayal, or, at the
very least, through thoughtlessness?
Who among us has not watched our noblest intentions for devoting time to helping
the hungry and homeless get buried under other priorities?
And who among us has not experienced difficulty in treating the least in our
society with the same respect we would give Christ?
Sin is a powerful and persistent
reality of human existence.
But here’s the good news: God’s grace is an even more powerful and enduring reality.
Yes, grace happens—regularly and often.
Our Second Lesson points us to one means by which grace happens, God’s coming
to us re-creatively in prayer. In
Psalm 51, a penitent stands in the presence of God and prays for forgiveness, in
accordance with God’s attributes of steadfast love and abundant mercy:
“… O God, … blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.…
Create in me a clean heart, O God,” i.e., a mind and a will open and oriented
to You, “and sustain in me a willing spirit,” i.e., one that is ready to
offer You praise, and ready to perform for others deeds of kindness and justice.
The penitent in this psalm understands that to be forgiven
is to be changed, to be re-created by God’s holy spirit.
The penitent understands that to be forgiven is to allow God, in a fresh
expression of creative power, to replace our unclean hearts, hearts of despair,
with clean hearts, hearts of service toward God and neighbor.
Our First Lesson points us toward another means by which grace happens, God’s
coming to us re-creatively in the sacraments.
The people of Israel and Judah had been wed to God in the covenant
established through Moses at Mt. Sinai. All
the people needed to do was obey the Ten Commandments carved for them on tablets
of stone, but instead the people had, against all their best intentions, broken
both the commandments and God’s heart.
Now to a recalcitrant people, lost in the consequences of their sin, the prophet
comes to proclaim good news of God’s grace:
God has chosen to have an enduring relationship with them: “… I will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.…
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.… for I will forgive their
iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
The grace of God’s new covenant happened then!
And both the season of Lent and this communion table of Christ’s
passion remind us that the grace of God’s new covenant happens still.
For our Savior Jesus, on the night of his betrayal and arrest, took the
goblet of Passover wine and said to those with him, “This cup is
the new covenant, sealed in my blood.”
The next day, Jesus poured out for us his own heart and spirit, on the cross,
that we might receive and be transformed by God’s grace, that we, through
grace, might be re-created with clean hearts and with spirits newly resolved to
love God and neighbor.
And what is the commandment of this new covenant that God would write on each of
our hearts, the commandment that God would write within us this day?
It is the simple imperative that comes with each offer of God’s grace:
“Let Me love you. Let Me re-create in you clean hearts and willing spirits.”
Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant, sealed in my blood.”
Friends, come now to the table of Christ, and open yourselves this very
day to God’s grace. Let God love
you. Let grace happen. Let
God re-create in you a clean heart and a willing spirit.
Let us pray:
O Risen Christ, our hearts are ready, and our spirits, prepared.
Come to us in love, and let grace happen. Amen.
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