The Open Heart

"I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."   (Jeremiah 31:33b)

Biblical faith is concerned, we might even say, obsessed with matters of the heart. The bible refers to the "heart" over 1000 times in various ways and contexts.  

In the book of Deuteronomy Moses said to the people, "What does the Lord require of you... but to serve the Lord your God with all your heart." (10:12)

The Psalms are brimming with references to the heart:  "I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart." (9:1)   "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you."  (19:4)   "Create in me a clean heart, O God."  (51:10)

One of the great "heart" passages comes from Ezekiel where the prophet, speaking for God says, "A new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."  (36:26)

But what does the bible mean by “heart”?   In our culture “heart” is usually associated with love, as in Valentine hearts; or with courage, as is brave heart; or with grief such as a broken heart.  But in the bible, most often, wherever it appears, “heart” is a metaphor for the self at a deep and comprehensive level.  Heart means our whole being.  "Heart" includes the intellect, emotions, perceptions, and the will – our total being.  The “heart” represents our spiritual center.  

So when the Psalmist says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” – he is not merely praying for forgiveness, but is praying to be a person of total and comprehensive integrity.

When Ezekiel tells the people that God desires to put a new "heart" within them, he is referring to nothing less that their total transformation; a new way of living, thinking and being.

When asked by the Pharisees which commandment in the law was the greatest Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart... And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:36-39)   Jesus inseparably links loving God and loving neighbor, and it involves the “heart”: the self - the whole being- the complete person- every aspect of our humanity. 

But why does the biblical witness place such an emphasis on the heart?   The reason is simple.  Because faith, as the bible defines it,  is a matter of the heart.   

A woman told me some years ago, someone I knew only vaguely through a colleague, that she had abandoned her Christianity for Buddhism.  I was curious and when I asked her why, she said that her new found religious experience In Buddhism was much more about a way of life, a way of living, a path to follow than her Christian experience.  Her Christian experience, she said, had emphasized merely believing the right things;  "head matters" as opposed to "heart matters."   That was her experience.  

It was during and after the Renaissance that faith began to be more narrowly defined as the beliefs in your head rather than matters of the heart; assenting to a right set of claims than walking a path.  Salvation began to be more narrowly defined as the afterlife reward for assenting to a correct set of beliefs rather than the deeper biblical meaning of "being made whole."

In the young Christian communities that sprung up around Jesus in the 1st century, faith was defined and lived as a matter of the heart; involving the whole self.  It was experienced as a way to travel and a path to follow.  Faith was a matter of the heart; something deeper than the head that involved one's whole being.   Salvation was also understood more holistically, more according to the biblical definition of "being made whole"  not just in the next life, but in this life right now! 

The Bible has many metaphors that describe the human condition and our need for God.   It talks about  bondage and our need for liberation.  It describes conditions of exile and our need to return and reconnect.   It describes various forms of blindness and our need to have our sight restored.  It speaks of sin and our need for forgiveness.  It talks about expressions of death and our need for new life.   

But another dominating metaphor for the human condition and our need is the closed-heart and the open-heart.   The heart., the self at its deepest level, can be closed to God or open to God; the heart can turn away from God or turn toward God.  We often hear the phrase in the Bible, "hardness of heart."   It's a metaphor for the closed-heart.  The Greek word used to translate "hardness of heart" is a fascinating word.  Listen to the sound of it: sklerokardia.  We get the word sclerosis from it; sclerosis of the heart.   It's a powerful metaphor reflecting a hardening of our deepest self.  It's a description of the impervious self withheld from God and from others. 

So, what does a closed/hardened heart look like in a human life?  The closed heart takes shape in  many different ways. It's not the same for everyone.

·         Blindness and impaired vision go with the closed heart.  When our hearts are closed we do not see clearly. We can become enclosed within our own little world.  The closed heart keeps us secluded and hemmed in.

·         A closed-heart is a heart in bondage:  As, in the exodus story, we can be in bondage because of the "hardness" of Pharaoh's heart; and Pharaoh can live within us.  we can be in bondage to the desiring and deceptions of our own hearts. 

·         A closed-heart lacks in gratitude.  Instead of a spirit of thanksgiving, a closed-heart often lives with an attitude of entitlement.  

·         A closed-heart lacks in wonder and awe.  The world looks ordinary and unremarkable when our hearts are closed.  I think that is part of what Jesus meant when he said, "Unless you become like children you cannot inherit the kingdom of God."  A child's heart is most often an "open-heart" filled with awe and wonder.

·         A closed-heart is a heart living in the exile of self-preoccupation and self-centeredness.

·         A closed-heart can lack compassion.  Compassion is the ability to feel with others at a level deeper than merely the head, but is felt in the gut, at a deep level.  A closed-heart can be insensitive to the call against social injustice in this world; numb, apathetic and indifferent to the suffering in the world

It is my experience that I am always living somewhere on a continuum between a closed-heart  and open-heart. (never all the way one or the other) Even in the course of a single day I can travel the continuum, some moments being more open and some moments more closed.  I know that  when I am stressed-out my "heart" is more closed than open.  I know my heart is closed when I am grumpy, impatient, or critical of others.  One Christian writer says it this way: "When I am standing in line at the grocery store and everybody looks ugly and is in my way, I know my heart is closed." 

Jeremiah, speaking with God's voice said to his people, "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts..."   

So the question is, what opens the heart?  What open our hearts when they become closed?  I cannot pose that question without remembering my grandma.  For various reasons, my grandma was not a happy person.  Grandma lived with a closed-heart much of the time. (I don't say that judgmentally, but existentially it was my experience of her)   Among other things, she was harshly critical of others, very hard to please, and most of the time she lived with a dour disposition - EXCEPT - when our son David was a baby we would bring him over to her house; and we would place baby David in her arms; and an astounding transformation would come over her as she held and rocked little baby David.  Baby David had the ability to open grandma's heart and draw her out of her exiled-self like nothing or no one else.  With baby in her arms her entire temperament would magically transform.  She would come out of her shell; love would flow; her countenance would brighten and shine like the sun. 

I am convinced the early Christians experienced something very much like that in Jesus.  The thing that made Jesus' life so remarkable was that he lived with an "open-heart."  And those who came into contact with him found their hearts being opened to life and people and God in ways they never expected, or had never dared before. That's why the gospels are filled with so many vivid metaphors of Jesus.  They are metaphors that describe their experience of Jesus which was essentially a transformation from an experience of a closed-heart - to a life-giving and transformative experience of an open heart. 

In our gospel today Jesus says, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit." (John 12:24)

That's a metaphorical description of a radical change of heart; moving from a closed heart (seed) to an open-heart (bearing fruit).

That's the path, the experience, the way, the truth and the life that Jesus leads us upon when we heed his invitation to follow.   It's a journey into an open-heart.