Living From the Heart

Psalm 14

Ephesians 3:14-21

  

Imagine a young girl playing outside in the yard on a very hot day.  There is no shade in the yard, and the intense heat is making her very thirsty.  Not far from where she’s playing there is a deep well full of ice-cold lemonade.  Although she didn’t know it, this well would provide as much ice-cold lemonade as she could ever drink.  But she didn’t ever go near the well.  Instead, when her thirst overtook her, she sprinkled a little sand on her dry tongue and choked it down.

Why did she avoid the refreshment of that deep well?  You tell me.  That girl is you.  That girl is me.  She stands for all of us who do not live from our hearts.  She stands for all of us who find ways to avoid drawing up what God has provided for us in the depths of our hearts.

In our reading from Ephesians today, Paul prayer for us is that “Christ will dwell in our hearts through faith.”  And so today I’d like to speak in a more personal way about why this is good news for us.

For the last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about why the CHURCH is important in God’s plans.  God has a plan, and we’re part of it because God has chosen the church to be a visible sign of God’s peace-making work in Jesus Christ.

But God’s plan for you and for me also involves the love of Christ taking root in us in a very personal way.  Today our reading directs our attention to Christ’s dwelling in our hearts.   So we will need to talk a little more personally. I want to talk about “living from the heart.”

When the Bible refers to our “hearts,” it is not a technical reference.  It’s not anatomical language.  In ancient cultures the “heart” is the pulsing center of who you are as a person.  To talk about your “heart” is a way of talking about the depths of your life where all the different parts of who you are come together.  And when Christ’s love comes to dwell in you, it is not in some remote part of you – in your pinky finger, your earlobe, or your appendix.  Christ’s love dwells in your “heart.”

The problem is that many of us live in ways disconnected from our hearts.  We live from the surface, superficial parts of our lives.  Rather than drawing lemonade from the well, we sprinkle sand on our thirsty tongues.

This is hard to talk about.  It might sound too mystical.  Or too complicated.  But really it is very simple.  So simple that children get it better than adults.  The living Christ has come to dwell in the center of your life and makes available to you a kind of joy and peace and a sense of purpose and contentment you never thought possible.

Our praying will change from occasional half-hearted prayers flung at a remote “god” to a confident, expectant prayer to the God who is closer to us than our own breath.

I want to call it, living from the heart.

So let me mention a few ways that living from the heart will get you in touch with what the kind of life that God makes available to us in Jesus Christ. 

Living from the heart gives us an inner strength

Paul prays for us that God “may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (v. 16).

One of the things that happens in us when the Spirit of Christ comes to dwell in our lives is that we find an inner strength that’s new.

On my first Sunday with you I set before you the story of Jacob’s all night wrestling match.  And I wanted to begin there because I wanted to make sure that we’re talking about reality and not fantasy.  And in reality, God’s blessings come to those who wrestle.

Our daily lives – our relationships, our work, our obligations – are full of difficulty.  The temptation to go numb, to settle for mere survival, to live with low expectations – that temptation is huge.  Because life is full of pain, and loss, and disappointment, and even when it’s not – it’s still hard.  And it takes great inner strength to be the person God has called you to be.  It takes great strength to live the life that you know you’re capable of.

That kind of strength is only available to people who can draw on the presence of Christ’s Spirit in your “inner being.”  So let me ask you – do you really believe that God has filled your “inner being” with the Spirit’s power?  Do you really believe that down in the depths of who you are there is light, and joy, and peace, and strength?

The reason I ask you that question is that many, many people are convinced that their hearts are full of ugliness and filth.  Many people imagine that their insides are rotten.

Now don’t get me wrong.  When I give voice to this confession of sin we make together every week, I really mean it.  My heart is amiss.  It’s off track.  My heart has too little love in it – for both God and my neighbors. 

And Jesus himself said that what defiles us isn’t what goes INTO our mouths, but what comes out of them.  Why?  Because the mouth speaks from what fills our hearts (Matthew 15:18). 

And we know that what Jesus says is true.  There is darkness in our hearts.  Down in the center of who we are we are too often angry, hostile, envious, un-content, greedy, selfish, and petty.  And these problems go down very deep in us.  They’re not superficial, they’re abiding habits, almost like addictions.  They’re very hard to shake.

The founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud has intensified this picture of our problematic hearts.  Freud’s picture of what it means to be a human being is that you’ve got all these unconscious urges and desires coursing through your life, and all of us respond by suppressing these dark urges.  We shove things down.  We cover them up.  We’re like a seething cauldron of dangerous urges that will flow out any unmonitored valves.

BUT, Ephesians reminds us that we cannot simply think of our hearts, our inward life, as a place full of darkness and sin.  The living Christ has been given us to “dwell in our hearts.”

If we are to live in this good news, we will have to learn to imagine our inner lives as a place full of beauty and strength.  Do you realize the beauty that’s inside you?   Our hearts have not yet been perfected in love of course.  But there is goodness taking shape inside you.  And that is God’s work in you.  That is part of God’s good plan for your life.  And in that inner strength you will be able to deal with all that life brings your way.

Living from the heart helps us get in touch with who we really are.

Paul prays that we would be “rooted and established in love” (v. 17).

“Rooted” (v. 17) is a gardening metaphor.  And roots grow down deep so that plants can be sustained and nourished from the soil.

“established” (v. 17) is an architectural metaphor.  You build strong buildings on strong foundations, dug deep into the ground of love.

Both images emphasize depth as opposed to superficiality.  We are likened to a well-rooted tree and to a well-built house.  God’s purpose is to set us down into the world to experience God’s love and share it with others.  That’s who we really are.

You might think about it like this.  There are some days when I live a life that feels rooted and established in God’s love.  There is a firmness to how I move through a day, and respond to various challenges and unexpected events.  I am able to be present and attentive in conversation.  I am able to resist coping with stress by eating or worrying or losing my temper.  I make time to do the things that are most important – to eat well and exercise, to pray and play, and to work with focus. 

But other days feel different.  I spin my wheels.  I have trouble focusing.  My mind wanders in conversation.  My work is plagued by distractions.  I let the urgent demands shape my day, leaving me no time for what matters.  My temper is short.  And my sleep is not restful.  Now what is the difference?  Why is it that some days I feel more like myself than others? 

Because sometimes I’m able to live from the heart.

If we’re not careful, we will spend most of our lives living from the surface of the many roles we play and the expectations that come along with those roles.  Every morning we wake up into a series of labels that assign us a series of obligations.

We’re members of our families . . .

citizens of the United States . . .

consumers and workers in the economy . . .

and members of a variety of organizations, including this congregation. 

And there is nothing wrong with them these roles, as far as they go.  But that’s precisely the point.  None of these roles goes all the way down into the center of who we are.  They capture only part of us.  And they cannot sustain us.  Because there is more to us than the many roles we play. 

There is only one role that gathers up all of who you are.  There is only one role that frees you to be fully yourself.  And it’s the role of being God’s beloved partner and friend.  Your role is to be a plant sending roots down into God’s love.  To be a building established on a foundation of God’s love.

Living from the heart helps us experience the love of Christ

Paul prays that we might “grasp – together with all the Lord’s people - how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (v. 18).

The image geometric dimensions on the front of your bulletin was an attempt to get you thinking about the scope of Christ’s love – the boundlessness of it.  But it may only serve to remind you how little geometry you’ve retained.

One of my friends, Nathan Brothers, likes mathematical games.  Here’s a question he asked me a few months ago.  How many gallons of water would it take to cover a football field with one inch of water? 

OK, I could have tried to string together a series of computations to offer a decent guess.  But I didn’t.  I just ballparked it.  So I said, “3,000 gallons.”  So that’s the over/under I’m giving you.  How many of you think it’s less than 3,000 gallons?  How many of you say more?  It’s WAY more.  I was off by an embarrassing magnitude.

Our minds are pretty good at small numbers, problem solving on smaller scales.

In New York we had a membership at the American Museum of Natural History, a few blocks from our apartment.  (It’s the dinosaur museum where the “Night at the Museum” films are set).  It’s a long winter, and with a small apartment, you just need somewhere to go.  And for us this was often it.

The Planetarium has a wonderful show on the vastness of the universe.  You’re sitting there tilted back in a dark auditorium, watching a screen on the ceiling.  Whoopi Goldberg narrates.  And I actually got disoriented and a little motion sick from the perspective whizzing from one end of the cosmos to the other, tumbling this way and that since there’s no “up” or “down,” where the distances between galaxies are breath-taking.

It’s hard to get our minds around large numbers and vast spaces.  And it is hard to get our minds around the love that Christ has for us, and for our neighbors, and for our enemies.  This love “surpasses knowledge,” Paul says.

Here is the good news: The immense and un-measurable love of Christ is dwelling in our hearts.  Do you realize the amazing gift you’ve been given?  This risen, living Christ, whose love stretches further and wider, higher and deeper than you can imagine, this Christ is well pleased to dwell in your heart.  This King of all Creation is pleased to take up dwelling in the cramped little quarters of your life.

Now this is good news for all of us.  But we easily forget it.  That’s why we need encouragement from one another.  We can only do this “together with all the Lord’s people” (v. 18).

 Living from the heart enables us to grow into fullness

Paul prays that in knowing Christ’s love, we would “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (v. 19).

In my own life and experience, I have found it very difficult to measure faithfulness.  I’ve found it hard to take inventory of my own spiritual life.  Hard to discern whether I’m growing, stretching, and learning.  Hard to figure out if I’m being filled with God’s fullness. 

Maybe you’re that way too.  But we can take heart.  We human beings were made for God.  We were designed to be filled with God’s light and God’s presence and God’s love.  Often we are nowhere near our capacity, yet the Spirit is at work in us, dwelling in our hearts, to transform us into little likenesses of Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther refers to us as “little Christs.”  (Is it OK to quote Martin Luther in a Presbyterian Church?  I’ll try to keep the Calvin to Luther quote ratio at 2:1).

And all of us are growing into a fullness, yet it’s hard to measure.  This love of Christ in our hearts is a love that “surpasses knowledge.”  It outstrips how you can think about it.  It exceeds any names you can give it, any categories you can assign to it.  You can’t put it on a map or a spreadsheet.  And maybe that’s why it is hard to measure how much, how far, and how fast we’re growing into fullness. 

Knowledge is good, of course.  The apostle Paul says if there’s anything good and lovely and excellent, we should “think on these things” (Philippians 4:8). 

But Paul is reminding us here that knowledge is never the end of the road for us.  Increasing in knowledge isn’t our goal.  Having the love of Christ dwelling in our hearts is the goal.  God is full of love.  And our goal is to be filled with the fullness of God, to be filled with love like God is filled with love. 

I think this congregation is moving into a period of exciting renewal.  And it’s NOT because I’m here as the new pastor.  (There will be people who “try us out” like we’re a new restaurant.  But believe me, they’ll be disappointed if they expect me to be funny and interesting enough to entertain them every week.)

I think the renewal is happening because a good many of you are at the beginning stage of a very personal renewal.  And this is going to be energizing not only for us.  It’s going to attract others into our midst – people who want to find what you’ve found.  They’re tired of sand in their mouths.  They want lemonade.

Paul’s prayer ends by naming God as the One powerfully “at work within us” (v. 20-21).  This is a God who can answer our prayers far beyond what we know even to ask or think.  To that God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever, Amen.