Cardiosclerosis
Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost
October 7, 2018
I am going to keep this short because one thing I have learned about the Blessing of the Animals service is that animals wait for no man.
So I am going to get right to the point. One of the greatest dangers to our faith according to Jesus is a condition called σκληροκαρδία. He puts it right out there in our reading today. It is referred to several times in the New Testament as well as the Old Testament. σκληροκαρδία sounds like an infirmity that might have some helpful prescription medication advertised during the inordinate number of commercials we have to watch during the evening news.
The writer of Proverbs, the self-help book of the Old Testament warns the reader that those who have σκληροκαρδία will have lives of trouble. σκληροκαρδία leads to a deafness to God’s voice in your life, it leads to blocking out God’s abundant grace.
If you translate the Greek it literally means hardness of heart, or stubbornness of heart, or obstinacy, or at its furthest reach, perverseness. It is an unwillingness and refusal to listen to God’s will.
And in our lesson for today what Jesus is talking about is a lack of tenderness in the hearts of men and women that leads them, on a whim, to divorce their spouse in order to marry another. Jesus is talking about a specific situation of which he has observed in his own community. He is not talking to us in terms the very good and valid reasons that people seek divorce, the very reasons that the church changed its policy on divorce and remarriage in the church years ago – irreconcilable differences, a loveless relationship, or a pattern of abusive. He is talking specifically about hardness of heart that treats marriage lightly. He is talking about the type of hardness of heart that keeps us from living the life that God intends for us.
And although the two passages within our Gospel reading today don’t seem to be connected. They look like they are thrown together only because of their proximity. But in truth they are inextricably linked.
When Jesus rebukes the disciples for trying to prevent children coming up to Jesus, he says:
“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
He sets up this juxtaposition because he wants his disciples to know that in order to receive the kingdom of God we need to have a child’s heart – a heart that has not yet been made hard by the world around them.
Here is an example of the type of open heartedness that Jesus wishes for us. On Thursday, I was walking down the hall here at St. Michael’s and a little girl who attends the Christian Family Montessori School whom I hadn’t spoken to for a while, flung her arms around me and buried her face in my side and said “I haven’t seen you for so long! I want to invite you to my birthday party – I think it is going to be at a farm!”
And that is the kind of open heart Jesus wants for us. It’s the open hearted love that our pets, or maybe just dogs (I’m not sure about cats) give us every time we come home, even if it was just the minute it takes to leave the house to go get the newspaper in our driveway. They look at us and through doggie sign language say “I haven’t seen you in such a long time! Thank God you are home! I was really worried”
But few of us would really want our children, whether our own, our nieces and nephews, or grandchildren, or children in our neighborhood – we don’t want them really to stay that open hearted, do we? We know living like that will eat you up and spit you out. People will take advantage of you. Life is too hard to live like that forever. A certain amount of hardening of heart is what we do to survive. That kind of tenderness will kill you.
But here is the thing, Jesus still calls us to tenderness – for ourselves, and for each other. Because without a tender heart we cannot be moved to compassion. Jesus promises us that when we love one another, with open hearts, amazing, Kingdom of Heaven type of things happen. We heal each other through our open-hearted listening and caring. We forgive each other because an open heart does not want to be weighed down by hate. And we seek forgiveness because an open heart does not like to be weighed down by guilt. We help each other with practical gifts of food, and shelter, and health care. We notice the people on the margins and invite them in. Good things happen when we live with this abundant love.
But have you noticed, sometimes our hardness of heart has such a tremendously thick strongbox? How do we become like the proverbial child of God Jesus was just preaching about? Well, I think being around young children, and listening to their wonder about the world, and witnessing their exuberance, helps to soften our sharp edges. Being around pets softens our hearts. I mean, haven’t we all seen grown women and men speak in baby talk to their pets and use words like “wudja wudja wudja” while giving a dog massaging scratches behind their ears? Maybe you do that?
But I think we also have to pray to God every day to open our hearts to ourselves and to each other, and to friends and strangers, far and near. Because this is what we are promised when we turn to God. And this sounds like a pretty sweet deal. In Ezekiel in chapter 11 verse 19 tells us we hear this is what God can do with sclerocardia, and on this quote I will end my sermon this morning:
I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart, so they will obey my decrees and regulations. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.
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