All Saints Lutheran Church
October 19, 2003
Pastor Tim Johnson
Texts: Philippians 2:5-11
John 1:1-5

This being the third week of our theme, “Where your heart is,” has me wondering whether we couldn't ultimately go for months focusing on what makes our hearts tick. After all, the life of the heart is a place of tremendous mystery. And, yet we have many expressions to help us convey what is the language of our hearts. We describe a person without compassion as “heartless,” and we urge him or her to “have a heart.” Our deepest hurts we call “heartaches.” Jilted lovers are “brokenhearted.” Courageous soldiers are “brave hearted.” True saints are said to have “hearts of gold.” If we need to speak at the most intimate level, we ask for a “heart-to-heart” talk, or say that we really want to get to “the heart of the matter.” “Lighthearted” is how we feel on vacation. And when we love someone as truly and deeply as we can, we say that we love “with our whole heart.” But when we lose our passion for life, when a depression sets in which we cannot seem to shake, we confess, “My heart's just not in it.”

The bottom line is that we all believe that the deepest and most important things in life have to do with our hearts. Unfortunately, though, we allow a whole ton of other things to become more important than the things of our hearts. But, to what end?

Like one man said, “In the end, when all is said and done in our lives, it doesn't particularly matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished in life—as a life that is lived without heart is perhaps most to be pitied.”

I'm not sure just why we find it so hard to listen to our hearts, but it seems that it begins rather early in life. It's when we are taught essentially to ignore and distrust those deep yearnings that we begin looking elsewhere for what will help us in life. We begin to suspect that people more want our performance in life than they want our hearts.

On the outside, people come to know us for what we do—our work and play, our schoolwork or extracurricular activities. Bob is an accountant, we say. Mary works for the government. Ted is an attorney. Shaun is an A student. Kendra is our point guard.

Another way that we live on the outside instead of what's on the inside is when we try to live according to some particular image. We do that by only wearing certain styles or brands of clothes, or dressing in a way so that we're desirable to the opposite sex, or when we get that cool car, even though we can't afford it, or we simply put on a happy face, even though there are other realities inside of us.

We quit living, sometimes, with the sure knowledge that what's inside is what matters—that we've loved for who we really are--inside. Our hearts have a lot to tell us—but unfortunately, they often don't find expression like they should.

A story is told about Beethoven, a man not known for social grace. Because of his deafness, he found conversation difficult and humiliating. When he heard of the death of a friend's son, Beethoven hurried to the house, overcome with grief. He had no words of comfort to offer. But he saw a piano in the room, and for the next half hour he played the piano, pouring out his heart in the most eloquent way he could. When he finished playing, he left. The friend later remarked that no one else's visit had meant so much.

Beethoven was able to speak from his heart because he knew how he did that best—through music. He didn't try to do it someone else's way. God does call us to live out of those deeper places of our hearts. The problem is, just about the point in life that you might want to be more attentive to your heart, most of us realize that our hearts need some help. In fact, it could be said that our hearts are diseased. They're not well.

But what about the spiritual side of our hearts? After all, don't our hearts in the spiritual sense also suffer from some pretty significant maladies? As Christians, we call it sin. But whatever label you put on it, it's everything about our hearts that is less than what God has intended. It includes our heartaches and failures that are the result of broken relationships and promises; choices we've made out of fear or anger rather than out of love; seasons of our lives where we've been inattentive to the beckoning of God to our hearts and instead we've allowed our pursuits of other things take over control of our lives. When I reflect on my own life and my efforts at living out of my heart, I'm struck by all the reasons why people don't want to—it's not all easy. For, when you really let your heart speak and feel, you can hear and experience some tough stuff—pain, disappointment, fear, intimacy, and vulnerability. So…often times people decide it's easier to ignore their hearts and just “tough it out” or tune in somewhere else. People wonder, then, why they experience what we've come to call “mid life crises.” And people try to respond to their heart's disease in all kinds of ways, often with hurtful consequences.

But the real medicine that our spiritual hearts need is nothing less than a quintuple bypass, a clearing out of our arteries, some blood thinner to get things flowing again. Actually, sometimes it's worse than that. We need new hearts. We need the stuff or the essence of God's heart. We need a heart transplant. We don't need everything about our lives to change, we just need the heart of God to center us again, to heal us, and to give our lives direction once more. In Ezekiel 11:19 , God says, “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.”

And, then, we need to listen deeply to what our hearts might tell us.

  Have you ever wondered what is deep in the heart of God? What God's deepest desires or thoughts are? Have you ever wondered what God would say if you could hear God speak? What you might hear…what you might see?

Well, the Bible says that God has revealed the depths of the divine heart. That the desires and thoughts of God have been exposed, if we would but look and listen in the right places.

Have you ever taken note of how much internal conversation can go on inside your heart and mind? Pondering and wondering. Hope and agony. Anticipations and plans. Love and anger. But what a different thing to give expression to the things of your heart.

It's the same with God. God had from the very beginning something that was not only in God's heart but was the very essence of God's heart. Something, a word, the Word, that was so profound that it would not only change human history, it would be the salvation for humanity.

Just like you and I finally speak our hearts through our words, so too God spoke a Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

That Word became flesh—became a human being. You and I try to express what's in our hearts through words of love and kindness, in the gift of a card or flowers, an act of kindness or encouragement, some physical touch that blesses someone's life. God did this same thing but by completely and totally becoming flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. So that you and I might see and know the totality of God's heart. In him, that is Jesus, was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.”

Jesus, born of Mary, became the living Word of God to show us the way of life and salvation. In Philippians, we hear what is understood to have been the foundation for an early church hymn. It says that even though the Word, the heart of God, who became a human being, had in him the very essence of God, he didn't consider that equality something to be focused upon. But, instead this Jesus, who is God's heart and Word expressed perfectly, took on the nature of a servant.

If you want to reclaim your heart…if you want to have God's heart renew and give your life direction and focused purpose…then you must look to Jesus for the answer. And, as we do this, we hear Christ calling us to a life that lives out of ones heart in authenticity, following the example of Jesus.

If you want to get close to God's heart, you must first receive what He has to give—bread and wine—broken body and spilled blood—so that you can get a taste for what it's all about—that His heart is for you! Through the nourishment of Holy Communion, we're drawn into God's love for all people.

I think there is no more profound discovery in life than the one that is made when you set everything else aside to serve the well-being of another person. I know that my deepest joy is when I set everything else aside and serve the needs of my family, just simply trying to let them be who they are and trusting that who I am is enough.

I have also discovered a part of my heart in the ministry of the church, particularly in places like Casa Hogar Elim orphanage in Mexico . It's in that setting also that I can simply be who I am apart from a role, and rediscover all over again that serving is not so much about doing as it is about being.

Our vision for ministry here at All Saints for next year is a matter of the heart. God's heart and our hearts. I hope that you will find a way to pour your heart out as Jesus pours out his heart for you. Amen.