A New Heart

Easter Day 2016; Luke 24:1-12; St. Paul’s Smithfield, 3/27/2016

Jim Melnyk: “A New Heart”

Hear, then, a parable of the kingdom of heaven: The kingdom of heaven is as if a person had a heart that had slowly turned to stone over the years – hard, sharp and flinty, with barely a perceptible beat deeply within.  To affect a cure the surgeon stops the heart’s feeble beating, and takes away the person’s own breath, using a machine to do that vital work.  Taking a scalpel, the surgeon then cuts open the body and removes the heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh – a heart that feels, that cares, and that loves.  Then the surgeon tenderly sows the person’s flesh together and causes the new heart to beat, and returns the patient’s breath to its own body.

Again: The kingdom of God is like a grave where the newly dead has been buried and a great stone rolled across the opening.  Morning comes.  The stone is rolled away.  And the grave is empty.

I wonder what’s more improbable.  Is it that human beings have figured out a way to stop a person’s diseased heart and remove it from the chest cavity – all the while keeping that person “alive” on a machine – and then replace that broken, wounded heart with another heart, one donated by someone who has also just died?  Or is it that the God of all creation – the God who brought all things into being – can somehow reach deeply within us and somehow turn a broken and wounded heart of stone into a living, beating heart of flesh?

I wonder what’s more improbable.  Is it that human beings have figured out how to take a person who has literally died to this world and jump start us back to life?  Or is it that the God of all creation – the God who said “Let there be light” – the God who jump started the whole of creation and said “This is good, this is very good!” –is it that this God can raise from the dead the One whose life and teachings could somehow make broken hearts sing, could make ruined bodies dance, and make shattered spirits soar?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which of these scenarios seem most probable to most 21^st century sojourners.  As Christians we are called to live with a “post-resurrection” mindset – hearing the stories of Easter Day and the days that follow as “folks in-the-know” – as people who have heard and claimed these stories as our own.  But many Christians today live with what Anglican priest Brian McGowan calls a “past-resurrection” mindset.  That is, the idea that it’s time we all move past that kind of a resurrection belief – the belief that something very real and very much experiential happened then, and happens still – in that Easter moment.             

           

And I wonder if it’s possible for 21^st century westerners to breach that modern day taboo against seeing resurrection as real – as only seeing it as fable or fairy tale?  Can we open our imaginations to the possibility that God just might have done something incredibly unique – something incredibly mind-boggling and beyond the ordinary – something uniquely extraordinary in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus then – and therefore in our lives today as well?

In many ways we’ve lost the wonder and power of Easter.  Author Lauren Winner writes: “The shocking claim of resurrection has, of course, been domesticated.  Easter,” she writes, “is too often allegorized into meaninglessness, with seasonal greeting cards, and even sermons that emphasize renewal or hope or rejuvenation.  But,” she concludes, “as Fleming Rutledge once asked, would the disciples really have ‘trembled with [terror and] amazement’ because the flowers bloomed again?” (Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, 4/12/2009)  The truth is Easter cannot be domesticated and still be Easter.  Easter is a proclamation of life, but it is a dangerous proclamation!  There is nothing tame, or sweet, or sappy about Easter outside the contents of our children’s Easter baskets.

“What the poetry of Isaiah anticipates – [that weary old heaven, jaded old earth, and conflicted old Jerusalem all will be broken open by the power of God to new, healthy possibility] – the early church confesses” (Walter Brueggemann, Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, 3/27/2016).  The Easter narrative of Luke 24provides us with a heavenly vision and a question that bears consideration to this day: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.”  The unasked question to the women hangs in the air: “When will your hearts let your minds believe what you have come to know all along – what Jesus has told you so many times before?”

We spend a great deal of our lives looking for the living among the dead.  No, we don’t hang out in cemeteries peeking under the lids of crypts, but so much of what is dead or dying in this world captures our attention and hijacks our agendas.  God has come among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth – the risen Christ of God – and we cannot seem to fix our focus on the new heavens and the new earth that God is creating.  Our imaginations – and sometimes even our hearts – are held in thrall by that which is dead or dying – because our 21^st century mindset tells us that something as incredible as resurrection can’t be real – it must be a metaphor.  And who in their right mind gives up status, or power, or wealth, for a metaphor?

The vision of heavenly messengers is enough for the women who come to the tomb – for Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and some others – who knows how many women were in that group?  But we know there weren’t any men.  It’s the men, still hiding back in the upper room, who will take some convincing.  And then when Peter finally goes to the tomb and sees that it’s empty – what does he do?  He goes home!  Grabs a cup of coffee and the NY Times…he certainly doesn’t go out and tell anyone the way the women did.

Three nights ago, in an upper room while breaking bread with his friends, Jesus shared with them his last will and testament.  To each of them, Jesus said, “This night I give you my love: this is my body…this is my blood.  This night I give you a new commandment – that you love one another as I have loved you.”  And today the risen Christ continues to say to each of us, “This is my body, this is my blood.  Love one another as I have loved you.”  On that first Easter Day, Jesus took from his friends their broken, hardened, scared and scarred hearts, and gave to them hearts of flesh with which to follow and love. 

We live in a world filled with people who have had their hearts broken – probably most of us have had that happen to us at least once, and a world filled with people who blindly – and many times not so blindly – break people’s hearts – sometimes even in the name of religion – and perhaps we’ve done this ourselves, as well.  The Baptismal Covenant we will proclaim in just a few moments should be our prayer that God will use us to bring healing to this world.  On this Easter Day, the risen Christ will take from us whatever is broken, hardened, scared or scarred, and give to us hearts of flesh – hearts with which to follow and love – hearts which give us the strength to live and to proclaim God’s love.