A New Heart – March 27, 2022, the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Ezekiel 36-22-28, Luke 13:1-17, 31-35
March 27, 2022, The Fourth Sunday in Lent

I never imagined this happening, but I actually know three people in my life who have had heart transplants.  Three people!  The first was a guy named Larry who I knew in High School, though I haven’t seen him much over the years.  But the other two I know very well.  One is my friend Harry, who I met more recently, who’s related to Patty.  And the other is Bill, who I’ve known for years since I first met him as one of the kids from the youth group in my first church.

As I said, those two I know very well, and I was in touch with them as they were going through their surgery.  I actually got them acquainted with each other before Bill’s surgery.  Which was good, because Harry really helped Bill in a time when he was pretty scared about his upcoming transplant!

So, for me, it’s hard to read Ezekiel 36 without thinking of those friends.  Speaking on behalf of God, Ezekiel said to the people, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, (remember those double phrases the Old Testament writers loved so much?)  “A new heart I will give you…”  “I will take out of you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

What a great “metaphoric” way of describing the hearts of the people of Israel!  Their hearts were “hardened.”  They were hearts of stone!  Maybe you remember the Exodus story, where the Pharaoh’s heart was “hardened,” and he would not listen to Moses, when he said, “Let my people Go!”  Well, the people in Ezekiel’s time knew that story!  It was their most important story!  Now Ezekiel is describing them as having “hearts of stone.”  They knew what he was getting at!  They knew that reference to the hard-heartedness of Pharaoh!  And we can only imagine how they felt, when they heard themselves being described that way!

As I was thinking about this, I thought of an old saying, that maybe you’ve heard.  “There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.”  Do you remember that one?  It was actually used in a song called “Everything is Beautiful.”  Do you remember that?  It was sung by(?) Ray Stevens.  Anybody want to guess when?  I always ask you that!  It was 1970!  But Stevens didn’t create that saying.  It can be traced back to an English author named John Heywood, in(?) – I’m not going to make you guess that!  It was 1546.  He wrote those words, and he also wrote this.  “The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.”  And isn’t that interesting?  “The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.”

One commentary I was reading this week suggested that Haywood was actually thinking of Jesus when he wrote those things.  Jesus said of the Pharisees, “Behold, I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” (Matthew 13:13)

But even Jesus didn’t come up that idea.  There’s a version of this in back in Isaiah, hundreds of years before Jesus.  God told Isaiah to say to the people that, “They hear but do not understand, they see but they do not perceive.  (Isaiah 6:9).  Again, there’s that same idea of “seeing but not seeing!”

Then of course we can’t leave Jeremiah out of this.  He said something similar, too!  Again, speaking on behalf of God, he said to the people, “O foolish and senseless people, you have eyes, but do not see, and ears, but do not hear.”  (Jeremiah 5:21)

And then, of course, we have the modern prophets, Simon and Garfunkel, who sang of, “People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening, people writing songs that voices never share, no one dare, disturb the sounds of silence.”  And of course, I’ve been thinking of that song all week long!

So, “There are none so blind than those who refuse to see.”  “There are none so deluded than those who choose to ignore what they already know.”  Ezekiel was implying all of that about the people of Israel.  And he was using their own Exodus story, and the reference to the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart, to try to get through to them.  “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you.  I will take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

And there is great emotion in Ezekiel’s words.  Through him we hear the anguish of God over the hardened hearts of his people.  And we hear it in Jesus’ words to the ruler of the synagogue, who begrudged him healing this old woman because it was the Sabbath day.  “You hypocrites!” he cried!  “Don’t you untie and feed your animals on the Sabbath?  Shouldn’t it be right that this woman, a daughter of Abraham, be released from her bonds of infirmity on the Sabbath?”

Then at the end of the chapter we hear his words of lament.  And again, hear this with the anguish God felt about his people!  “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you!  How often I would have gathered you together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not.”  There’s great anguish there!  And I think he felt a lot like Ezekiel that day.

So, I remind you again, this is Lent.  And Lent is the time when we are called to look at ourselves and our lives of faith.  It’s a time when we strive to see where we may have fallen short.  And in doing so, we need to think about where we may have allowed ourselves to refuse to see.  We need remember the words of John, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (I John 1:8).  And as we do so, we need to see where we might be “deluding ourselves by choosing to ignore what we already know.”

Lent is a time when we look at our own hearts and see where they might be hardened to the ways of God.  We talked about “The Ways of God” last week.  We need to see where our hearts may have become “Petrified.”  That’s a word we usually associate with fear.  But “petrified” literally means “turned to stone” – “frozen with fear.”  We need to see where we need to be “sprinkled with clean water,” as Jeremiah described the cleansing of the people in his time.

They needed that!  They had forsaken God.  They had gone after the idols of the nations around them.  And I don’t think I have to tell you that there are idols in the world around us, too.  And we need to see where we may have forsaken God and worshipped those idols.  We may be “worshipping” things.  We may be “worshipping” our way of seeing things.  We may be worshipping our ideologies and even our beliefs.  And we may even be worshipping our way of worship!

That can happen, can’t it?  Our form of worship is supposed to help us worship God.  But sometimes it can get in our way of our worship, too!  Can’t it?  And each of us, in this church, with our two forms of worship, need to ask ourselves if that’s happening to us.  And if it is, if the form of worship is getting in our way of worship, rather than helping us worship – if we’re even worshipping the form of worship, rather than worshipping God – maybe we need to take a step back and think about Jesus’ words, that “true worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.” (John 4:23)

The first thing I would say about that is something you’ve heard me say before.  Worship is not something you go to, to watch someone else do!  Worship is what each of us do, together.

And “true worship” – worship in its purest form – is simply saying, “God, I love you!”  That’s worship!  It is that direct, first-person praise of God.  I would remind you what I once said about how some songs are “about” God, and some songs are songs “to” God.  We should think about those two things when we sing them.  “How Great is our God” is a song “about” God, isn’t it?  But “I Love you, Lord” is a song “to” God.  Do you see the difference?  And it’s the songs (or the hymns or the psalms!) that are “to” God that are the purest forms of worship.  Think about it.  You don’t a relationship with somebody just by talking about them.  You have a relationship when you talk to them!

So, I invite you – again – this Lenten season, to take that good look at yourselves, to see where your hearts may have become a bit “petrified,” to see where you might be refusing to see, refusing to hear, or choosing to ignore that which you already know.  As we said last week, seek to know God’s ways, strive to think God’s thoughts.  Spend some time in simple worship, simple adoration and praise of God.  Say to God at least once every day, “I love you, Lord.”  Acknowledge before him where you have failed, and where you need his strength to see, to hear, and to acknowledge.

“Behold, a new heart I will give you…” saith the Lord.  “I will take out of you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Prayer

Eternal God, we are amazed by your Grace, and we are humbled by your mercy!  Because too often we are so focused on our world that we fail to see your kingdom.  Open our eyes and our hearts, that we may “see thee more clearly, love the more dearly, follow thee more nearly – day by day.”  In our Savior’s name we pray, Amen.