The Hole in the Heart

It is great to be back after Holy Week and Easter. Last week, we started Thursday night with the Last Supper and walked out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Friday, we picked up in the Garden, had Jesus arrested, tried, beaten, and dead on the cross. We saw the centurion verify Jesus was dead by taking his spear and stabbing him through his side into his heart…we saw the blood and water come gushing out. We saw Jesus buried and the Tomb sealed.

And then on Easter morning, we saw the women go to the tomb to clean and wrap the body in spices, but the stone was missing and they were greeted by a man who told them that Jesus had risen. And Mary Magdalene hung around the tomb and then saw Jesus risen! And all the earth rejoiced!

Our first reading today is from the Acts of the Apostles. It is a wonderful description of the early church a few months later.

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

It is a description of a wonderful community, a community of believers who understood what was important…and what was not important. They understood that spreading the Gospel had eternal consequences…and that owning extra land and houses did not. 

Acts 4:32-35, Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2, John 20:19-31 

The early believers understood that personal wealth – the extra land and houses they owned, the barns full of wheat, the extra items they had – it was all a form of misplaced security. We put money into our 401k plan so we can live securely in our old age, we hold onto that old lawnmower so we can fix it someday if our good lawnmower breaks down, we hold onto those extra acres so we can keep people at a distance and perhaps sell the property to raise cash if we need to someday.

In extreme cases, we hold onto boxes and bags of old clothing, boxes of old appliances, spare beds, extra furniture, old shoes, broken chairs, random pieces of fabric and metal because somewhere, a long time ago, we were taught that all these items might become useful and valuable again some day. And they might. We hold onto all these things – money, property, and goods – because we have a terrible fear that we will need something someday and we’ll never be able to get back what we give away. We become hoarders and misers.

But all these things that might be valuable and useful for us someday - they would be valuable or useful to someone else today. Our fear keeps us from being generous. Our fear keeps us from helping others. Our fear keeps us from spreading the Good News of Christ.

Our churches have had superb leadership in the past who understood that God loves us. Our two churches are highly unusual, I’ve found out. For we keep our doors unlocked. We trust in the Lord to protect our buildings. We trust in our neighbors and welcome them all. We trust that our generosity will protect us. But most of all, we rely upon the Lord to handle anything that might happen.

Other churches don’t have this trust. They lock their doors – even during the daylight. They install alarm systems. They worry about their neighbors – they don’t trust their neighbors. And so they build up a mutual distrust in their neighborhoods. The people around the don’t feel welcome, the people around see the glances of mistrust, the neighbors feel shut out from God’s house. And all because these Christians don’t believe God will protect their buildings – instead, they trust in their locks and their alarms. I would rather trust in the power of God.

The early believers recognized that they had nothing to fear. They recognized that even if they were killed, Jesus would just raise them from the dead one day. And so they became generous, particularly within their community, and that mutual generosity, that mutual sharing of possessions, gave each member a security which allowed them to put aside their fear and speak to other people about the love of God and the Resurrection of Christ.

It wasn’t limited to the New Testament church. That feeling of community was found at times in the Old Testament. Look at our Psalm 133, which is a Psalm of ascents, a song sung as the people walked up the mountain out of the Jordan Valley to Jerusalem:

How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.

It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

The dew of Hermon – Mount Hermon was and is the great mountain north of Galilee, snow-topped, the mountain where Jesus and three of his disciples climbed for the Transfiguration. Hermon was known for its clean life-giving water, put on the mountain through rain and fog and dew and snow, water that flows down into the freshwater Sea of Galilee, and then down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea of salt. Even today, Mount Hermon provides much of the water for the Galilee region.

And the oil on Aaron’s head and beard – a symbol of abundance in a land where olive oil meant food and lamp oil and healing oil. Who could afford to waste oil such that it ran down the beard onto the robe except a secure, generous, wealthy person?

And so it is when a community – not just a church, but an entire community comes together in unity and trust. I have a rototiller – you have extra seeds. Let’s both have a good garden this year. I have a box of children’s books – you have children – we both benefit when your children love to read. You have a healthy teenager who is bored, I have a yard that needs mowing and can afford a few dollars a week.

But all of this requires two things – security and trust.

How can we have security?

When we take what we know in our heads about Jesus Christ and move it into our hearts.

We know that we will be resurrected. We know that God will take care of us. We know that God considers us more valuable than sparrows, yet God feeds the sparrows. Why aren’t we secure? Why are we anxious? Why do we need pills for our anxiety?

It is because we still haven’t taken this head knowledge about Jesus and God and moved it into our heart.

But how do we make that knowledge move? 

We have to take a chance, we have to practice our faith, we have to step on the tightrope and trust that God will protect us. 

A good way to do this is through tithing. Increase your giving – pay God first – and see what happens. Some people feel that if they were to give their money to God first, their entire budget might collapse. Try it this month and see what happens. It builds your trust in God and that has great benefits.

Another way is to step forward and do something that terrifies you. Offer to read scripture on a Sunday morning. Offer to help in Children’s church or co-teach a Sunday School class. Sing in the choir. Play the piano. Offer to maintain some landscaping for the church this year. Talk to someone new. Talk to someone you’ve held a grudge against for months or years.

OK, you’ve done those things, but now you need to really trust God. Take the Lay Servant’s course. Start a new program or meeting or outreach at the church. Take on a foster child. Commit to talking to twelve people a week about Christ. Start a business. Do something you know you can't do by yourself, but do something you know God wants you to do. Ask for God's help and step forward.

Stepping on the tightrope builds our trust in God – and in God working with us through the Body of Christ, the Church. Our security level goes up as we realize that God is with us, supporting us each day. And as more and more of us do these sorts of things, our community becomes even more attractive to others.

Take Thomas the Apostle, Doubting Thomas as he is called. Thomas did not trust the other Apostles, the men he had walked with for three years. Why? Perhaps they had teased him too many times. Perhaps he had been too gullible for their April Fools jokes over the years. Perhaps he was skeptical of wild claims. Perhaps he felt his friends were the ones who were too gullible, too easily tricked into believing wishful thinking. Whatever it was, Thomas did not believe his friends when they told him that Jesus was alive. He did not trust them.

Thomas demanded proof. Thomas said he would not believe unless he saw the nail marks on Jesus’ wrists and feet and put his hand in the hole in his side where the spear had stabbed Jesus to his heart and the blood and water had gushed out.

And so Jesus steps in and shows Thomas the truth. And Thomas believes.

Peace comes when we know the Truth.

Sometimes we need God’s help in understanding things, things we can will ourselves to accept by faith, but something about us still needs proof. And so I’ll tell you a way to recognize truth – if you are a baptized believer and have received the Holy Spirit.

Blaise Pascal, the mathematician and theologian, once wrote something in his book “Pensees” – the French word means “Thoughts” - about a hole in our heart that can only be filled with God. Here is the complete quote from the Penguin edition of Pensees.

"What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself" (148/428).

When this hole in our heart, this empty footprint is filled with God and God’s Holy Spirit, we can recognize Truth. Until this footprint is filled, like someone trying to make pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit, we will try to make everything false and temporary in this life fit the print – but nothing has the footprint of God except God. And until that print has been filled by God, we will have a hole in our heart that sucks air and creates pain and unease and suffering and torment.

But once we have God’s foot back in that print, the hole is gone. And then we can look at the world around us with peace and security, trusting in God, and we will know what is false and what is true. For the hole in our heart is gone, the leak of blood and water is plugged, we are no longer dying – instead, we are living forever! Peace comes when we recognize Truth.

And with that peace comes the ability to love others instead of the desire to use others. A community filled with people who have had their heart holes plugged is a community that can turn their attention to people who are bleeding out, who are dying, who are desperately trying to fill that footprint of God with everything and anything – money, ambition, power, chemicals, lust, worry.

The Apostle John equated God with light and sin with darkness. Since we know that God is truth and sin is a lie, part of our reading from I John makes since to us.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

John does not claim that one who knows God is sinless. Unlike some people, John doesn’t claim that a Christian automatically becomes sinless. John wants us to avoid sin, but recognizes that we will still sin – in fact, claiming to be without sin is a lie. But Jesus will speak to the Father when we sin and our sins will be forgiven.

Let this be a sign to you. When you fear, when you worry, when you hurt another because of your fears and worries – you have not yet allowed God’s foot to completely fill the print that is in your heart. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, you have allowed the hole in your heart to become unplugged. You have believed in lies instead of Truth.

And so, the solution to fear, the solution to worry, the solution to those times when we hurt others is to call once again to Jesus and ask Him to bring us closer to God, for God to forgive our sins, and to remember once more that God has this covered, that God loves us, that God will make all things work out well in the end – maybe not today, maybe not even next year, maybe not even in this life, but in the end. Peace comes when we know the Truth.

It is the same way that those who followed Jesus to Golgotha and the cross thought all was lost when the centurion stuck the spear into Jesus’ side and made a hole in Jesus’ heart, allowing the blood and water to spill out just because the centurion wanted to be sure Jesus was dead. His fear led him away from the Truth. The disciples' fears led them away from the Truth.

Yet, by the end of the weekend, their grief had turned to joy, for they had found the Truth in that Sunday evening meeting when Jesus arrived. A week later, even Thomas was on his face worshiping Jesus as God walking upon the earth. He had found the Truth and the hole in his heart was plugged.

When God is involved – and God is always involved when people worship God’s Son Jesus – things always turn out great in the end.

If you need to ask Jesus to repair the hole in your heart, to bring God’s foot back into the print that is in your heart, if you need to ask for help for yourself or another, it is as simple as asking Christ to fill your heart with God, to listen to the words of the Holy Spirit speaking to you, to recognize that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and worthy to be followed.