April 2, 2006
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the Road to Jerusalem: With A New Heart The prophet Jeremiah declares God will make a new covenant, a new agreement that will be written not in new books of the law, though those written codes are important, but will instead, be written in our hearts. Peter learns what it means to have a new thing written on the heart when he finds himself in the living room of a Roman soldier, Cornelius, a military leader of the occupiers of Jerusalem. Cornelius we are told is a “devout man, who feared God, who gave alms, and who prayed constantly to God” (Acts 10.2). “He is an outsider, but one who is at least on the fringe of the community. He is a Gentile willing to be instructed and guided. Cornelius has had a vision that leads him to send for Peter. It is a strange vision, but it matches the strange vision Peter has had. Peter’s vision occurred while he was praying at noon on the flat room of a house in Joppa. A large sheet is lowered containing all animals. Peter is told to kill and eat the food in front of him. Three times a voice comes to Peter, and three times he refuses to eat food he considers to be unclean and forbidden. Jewish dietary laws and restrictions were for him and others still part of the Jewish community a sign of faithfulness in a time when there was pressure to renounce their faith and all of the special spiritual practices that go with the faith, and just become a good citizen of the Roman empire. What would be the big deal if you ate some pork ribs today, and offered incense to the Emperor tomorrow? Understand that these restrictions which we may follow by choice were for the Jewish community a matter of survival and identity for Peter and his brother and sister worshipers. “And yet, can it be that these laws are being supplanted by some other basis for survival and identity?” (Interpretation, Acts. William Willimon. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988, p.95-96). For the church, our basis for finding and saving our lives and identity is Jesus. For Peter, it was quite a vision. Peter is the most zealous of the apostles, and in his journey with Jesus to Jerusalem and beyond, it is Peter who is most clear about the identity of Jesus. He is the one who answered without hesitation when Jesus asked, “who do people say that I am?” with those words we repeat when we come forward to give ourselves to Christ; “who are you? You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16.16). It is Peter who was brilliant in his description of what the Holy Spirit had done on that first Pentecost after the resurrection (Acts 2). Earlier, it was he who said to Jesus, “these others may leave you, but I never will (Matthew 26.33), and, I may have to die with you, but I will never deny you” (Matthew 26.36). Peter’s is a life story of faith and forgiveness, and redemption. Because, he did leave, he did deny, he did regret that he could not keep his word, he did receive forgiveness, and a commission to lead the church. He was beginning to see what difference it makes when God is deep in our hearts and souls. Now to speak of the heart in scripture is not to speak only of that muscle that sits in the middle of our chests, it is more than the means by which blood moves through our bodies, and it is much more than the pulse beats by which we measure our heart rate during exercise.“The heart is the center of emotions, feelings, moods, and passions. That is why when we are happy, we speak of our hearts leaping with joy; and when someone we love leaves us, we speak of a broken heart. It is equated with joy (Deut.28.47, Acts 2.26), grief (Psalm 13.2), a bad mood (Deut. 15.10), love (Philippians 1.7), courage (II Samuel 17.10), and fear (Genesis 42.28). Since the heart is the center for decisions (II Samuel 7.21), obedience, devotion, and intentionality, it represents the total human person. Within the heart, human beings meet God’s word (Jeremiah 32.40) and so the heart is the location where conversion takes place (Psalm 51.10, Acts 2.37) (From Harper’s Bible Dictionary. San Francisco. Harper & Row 1995, p. 377). With a new understanding of how God touches the heart, Peter accepts the invitation to Cornelius’s house. He is able to go to the Gentile, Roman, soldier’s house and because God kept the promise to give people a new heart, Peter with his heart full of new understanding begins to address Cornelius’ household. Now Peter, who first confessed Jesus as the Christ, begins his remarks with another confession: after his rooftop experience, God has given to him a new heart for diversity and inclusiveness. “I truly understand that God shows no partiality” (v.34). We can hear Peter saying, “what I knew as a watched Jesus talk to people from every walk of life, Pharisees, Scribes, women, children, people of high, low, and no reputation, I now understand in my heart that the One who created us, loves us all and wants good things for us.” God will do right by people whose faith is in God. Understand that we do not have a promise of trouble-free life. Even the faithful are not immune to grief, sickness, disappointment, or even sinfulness. But this is nevertheless the foundation on which we stand – our God does not play favorites. We know that here as we celebrate the diversity of God’s creation, that is a good thing, and we can by our diverse congregation be witnesses and models of the kind of church Jesus intended. It is important not only to know this truth about God, but to truly understand it because we live in a time when people of faith from the far ends of the theological and political spectrum, the left and the right, want to speak for God on all kinds of issues as if God does not still speak to us. But notice who Peter says is among God’s people, simply those who fear, that is respect God and hold God in awe. Peter’s confession does not say a word about theology, politics, about marital status, or sexual orientation, where we grew up, the size of our financial portfolios, or the lack thereof. What matters is the state of our hearts as God’s great diverse world is that we respect the integrity of the personhood of all human creation. This is the good news of Jesus Christ whom Peter declares and we believe is Lord of all (10.36).” After all, “one cannot have a Lord who is Lord of only part of creation. So in any nation any one who fears God and does what is right ‘is acceptable to God’ (Willimon, p. 97). We cannot say that we have a God who only loves, “my country”, “my friends”, “my church”, or “my family”. The God who created and loves the world is so much bigger than what we think of as “ours”. God also gives us a new heart for proclamation. For all of us, Jesus is the one who died for us and who lived again and who calls us now to live for him and to believe that ours is the faith on which his church is built. Think of the old saying, “If every church member were just like me, what kind of place would this church be?” Let that little saying call out the best in you so that by the grace of God, your very life will be the word of proclamation about Jesus. Then when you say “I am a Christian”, people will know by the way you live your life, even when someone cuts in front of you on the freeway, that proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord of your life is a good thing. Find a new heart for proclamation.Finally, Peter has a new heart for what someone has called holy urgency. Jesus Christ has commanded us, he tells us to say, as Peter did, who he is – and there is no better time to do it than now. Why now? Because this is our time not to be so concerned with our own survival as a church that we forget what our purpose is. Do we have financial and other issues here? Yes, we do. Are those issues the real threat to our survival, I do not believe so, but I do believe that they are calling us to think and pray and say what is important to us here. So we struggle here a bit, but we do not do so for no reason. We have been looking at excerpts from Joan Chittister’s book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eardmans Publishing Company, 2003). Listen as she describes struggle and hope, and see if you can find yourself in her words: “Struggle is a cycle that threatens to splinter our souls into shambles. Hope is the legacy that emerges in response to each of struggle’s deceptions that change is destructive, that we are alone, that God has deserted us, that we are unequal to the task, that we cannot go another step, that our scars have left us forever unfit. “Despair is a spiritual disease into which is built its antidote: hope. It is a matter of refusing to die at exactly the moment when we are being offered new life. “Hope is not a denial of reality. But it is also not some kind of spiritual elixir. It is not a placebo infused out of nowhere. Hope is a series of small actions that transform darkness into light. It is putting one foot in front of the other when we can find no reason to do so at all. “A Native American tale tells of the elder who was talking to a disciple about tragedy. The elder said, ‘I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.’ The disciple asked, ‘But which wolf will win the fight in your heart?’ And the holy one answered, ‘It depends on which one I feed.’ “The spiritual task of life is to feed the hope that comes out of despair. Hope is not something to be found outside of us. It lies in the spiritual life we cultivate within. The whole purpose of wrestling with God is to be transformed into the self we are meant to become, to step out of the confines of our false securities and allow our creating God to go on creating. In us” (Chittister, p. 102-103). Jeremiah struggled with a word from God about a people who had forgotten the first covenant. Peter struggled with what it meant to eat with a Gentile and to realize that God places no barriers on who will be part of the community of faith, and neither should we. We struggle to know how it is that God is calling us into relationship in a way that will touch our hearts for worship, mission and service. As our hearts are touched, look for more compassion, more faith, deeper prayer, deeper ability to hear God speaking and greater opportunity to name Jesus Christ as Lord. As our relationship with God grows, we will find ourselves in deeper relationship with each other, and we will truly understand that God is as close to us as our hearts. Praise be to God. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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