Create In Me A Clean Heart

Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Here we are again - at that place in Mark’s Gospel that makes everyone uncomfortable.  Divorce is a topic that in a day and age when it is common practice, and women have greater recognition and equality with men than they did two thousand years ago, clergy and laity alike are often made very uncomfortable by these few words spoken by our Lord.  But there is more here than just Jesus’ pronouncement about divorce, there something that seems to lie at the root of the problem in relationships, and though Jesus mentions it here, it tends to get overlooked when we read this Gospel from Mark.

In His response to the ever “smarter than thou” Pharisees who are trying to trip Him up with their question, and after asking them what Moses had to say on the topic, He tells them:

 “Because of your hardness of heart, he wrote this commandment for you.”

Before I say more, let me just say, this is not about abusive or toxic relationships, but about ones that could be resolved, but, sadly, are not.

Hardness of heart lies at the base of the problem, but what exactly is it?  One way to describe it might be that it is something that happens gradually, over time. You can start out with a heart filled with love, but the trials of life and the temptations of the world may steal your joy and make you hardened toward your loved one. This can happen in both ones worldly and spiritual life. When it happens, you lose your devotion to and love for the other, be they partner, spouse or Christ Himself.  Mother Teresa once said that she never worried about her Sisters unless they lost their joy.  After all, a heart filled with love for the Lord is a joyful heart.

So, divorce is a symptom, but hardness of heart is really the problem.  The big one - not just for people who divorce or come close to doing so.  It’s a problem for all of us adults, whatever the state of our relationships.  This hardness of heart can damage our most intimate relationships, and it gets played out in other areas of life as well.  Hardness of heart is what distinguishes us from the young children whom Jesus offers us as models for His Kingdom.

The heart in question here is, obviously, not that beating organ in your chest. What is meant is the heart in the Biblical Sense is the core of human existence, what makes us who we truly are. The hardening of this heart is the great danger in life.  A hard heart is a lost opportunity, for it is in our hearts that God speaks, through our hearts that God works in the world.

A heart that has become hard cannot be pure, because it cannot pursue the purpose for

which it exists.  To the pure in heart, Jesus makes a tremendous promise: they shall see God.  To miss the realization of this promise is to miss everything.  Yet all of us suffer from hardness of heart to one degree or another, and such hardening can happen without our awareness of it.  The core of our existence hardens when we run scared, when forces such as pride and fear and hatred reign inside us.

Our hearts harden when we accept glittery substitutes, sensational idols, or even worldly security in place of the authentic and challenging life God constantly offers us.

Many forces in this world, including people and institutions, contribute to hearts becoming hard.  The deadening of our heart is often presented as something else: a toughening, a maturation.  Sometimes it is even applauded.  We take this internal deadness as a normal development rather than as an appalling loss.

Christianity claims that in response to this menace, God wants to replace stony hearts with hearts of flesh, hearts tender and alive.

This past Friday was a special day in the Church, it was the feast of St. Francis of Assisi – you know, the saint in the brown robe who is always pictured with birds and animals around him. In some congregations, when St. Francis of Assisi day is celebrated, there is a blessing of the animals.  This can be fun or messy or both.  But, that aside, it is interesting to note that while Francis is chiefly a Catholic saint, Protestants also seem to know who he is, and even say in church the prayer attributed to him – you’ve probably heard it – it begins, “Lord make me an instrument of Your peace”.

St. Francis is a good example of a man who went from having the hardest of hearts, to having one overflowing with kindness, gentleness, and love. He began his life as a spoiled, rich kid, and lived a debauched life of pleasure, so much so he would later say of himself, “God could not have chosen anyone less qualified, or more of a sinner, than myself”. But Francis fell in love with God, with Jesus, and joy filled his hard heart, and melted it.  And that is what we all need, to fall in love with God.  It sounds corny, and thus it is easy to dismiss as silly, or fantasy, but it is neither.  It is what is needed to soften our hard hearts.

So – how does one fall in love with God? 

The answer is: the same way we do with a partner, a spouse.  We fall in love with one another because we spend time together; we learn about each other; we focus on the beautiful, good and true aspects of each other.

We need to do the same with God.  Spend time with Him every day in prayer.  Learn about Him through meditation on the Gospels and Scripture and through spiritual reading.  We need to think about all the good gifts Jesus gives us/ appreciate the world He has made for us; the faith He has given us; the people He has put in our lives. Thank Him specifically for all the good things He did last year, in the past, all the way back to childhood, and for all He is doing for us this week, this day, each moment of our lives.

And then we need to ask Jesus for the gift to love Him more — or even to fall in love with him.  After all, if we can fall in love with fallible human beings, we ought to be able to do the same with God.

Today we celebrate Holy Communion, one of the many outward and visible gifts Jesus gives us repeatedly in our lives.  Different beliefs may accompany what happens at the holy table, the altar, but we all know that Communion is a gift of great Love and meant to instill in our hearts that Love which melts away the hard places, and helps us live as Jesus wants us to, lives filled with faith, compassion, kindness, and unconditional love.

No matter who we are or what we struggle with, we all have those hard places in our hearts that need Jesus, need God.  Francis also said of himself, “I have been all things unholy.  If God can work through me, He can work through anyone”.

Let us pray to be ever open to the deep, sustaining, boundless Love of God – in the words of the prayer attributed to St. Francis:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; wherethere is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. In Jesus Name. Amen.